Obama "personally has shown almost no interest in the human rights situation in Russia"

But, of course, why should the Apologizer-in-Chief show any interest in the human rights situation in Russia or in any other place when the only thing that stirs the interest of leftists the world over, American or foreign, and gets them frothing at the mouth, is the unbearable, shocking, catastrophic, nightmarish situation in… capitalist America and the West?!

Vladimir Putin has no official opponent yet to accompany him on his planned victory march back into the Russian presidency next March

quips John Vinocur in the International Herald Tribune, as he discusses the result of the Apologizer-in-Chief's "smart" diplomacy.

But from the look of things, he may be setting up Barack Obama as a notional fill-in.

…In terms of Russian politics and jacking up United Russia’s scores in the presidential election next year and in national legislative voting on Sunday, Mr. Obama and the United States were being held up to nationalist voters as the ugly opposition. This Russian audience (and plenty of foreigners, as well) has often heard from Mr. Putin, in line with a major policy speech he made in Munich in 2007, that an aggressive, overbearing United States is a central problem for the world.

… All the same, the threat to New Start is a first, endangering the arms treaty that Mr. Obama has called the most significant in two decades. The reverberations from the threat create a new mood of international tension going beyond a challenge to the wisdom of the administration’s reset with Russia and its insistence that Moscow is generally helpful.

Mr. Obama’s response? There has not been a word.

Rather, the White House staff has described as unfounded Russia’s concerns that the missile shield, designed as protection against Iranian nukes, could be used against Moscow’s ballistic missiles, and has repeated its willingness to discuss the matter.

But the problems with Russia are piling up just a couple of months before a U.S. presidential election campaign in which the reset was to be portrayed as a foreign policy triumph.

Here are just a couple of Russian-made points of confrontation that are meeting with Mr. Obama’s silence: Russia’s continued supply of weapons to a murderous regime in Syria, and Russian leaders’ revived talk about targeting eventual U.S. missile-defense sites in Europe with its own weapons.

… Kurt Volker, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO under both the Obama and Bush administrations, said: “If Putin wants to destroy missile defense, he can play the German card. That is, pushing Germany to resist it because, ‘If Russia is upset, the reason is NATO and the United States are doing something wrong.’ Putin did it in 2007 with some success, and he can make that move again anytime.”

… In her Senate confirmation hearing in 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, speaking of what appeared to be Russia’s goal to create a Europe dependent on Gazprom’s natural gas exports, said, “It is certainly a security challenge that we ignore at our peril.”

These days, while Germany has chosen to abandon nuclear energy, a major German utility is currently negotiating a deal with Gazprom that would give Russia a foothold in Europe’s downstream business, and Gazprom is achieving end-user access through its first purchase of a German supplier. The French energy consulting firm Capgemini estimates that Russia’s present 26 percent share of the European Union’s natural gas supply will be 50 percent by 2030.

… Against this background, and with Mr. Putin’s government needling Mr. Obama with threats about renouncing New Start, can Mr. Obama respond in a way that both better defines the Russian leadership the United States is dealing with and makes clear that the U.S. president is not a pushover for it?

A possibly effective method might be Mr. Obama telling the world what he has left unsaid but what is obvious and incontrovertible: that the “election” returning Mr. Putin to the presidency is an opaque exercise that the United States, for the sake of the Russian people and their human rights, bemoans — or, even more to the point, condemns.

I asked David Kramer, a former U.S. assistant secretary of state for human rights, and now president of Freedom House, an organization that supports the global expansion of freedom, whether he thought such a declaration was likely. His answer: not very.

“Beyond a speech in 2009 by President Obama, he personally has shown almost no interest in the human rights situation in Russia,” he said. “When the United States says something, Russians particularly care who is saying it — and it hasn’t been the president.”

Even the NYT Is Forced to Admit that Abroad, Barack "Smart Diplomacy" Obama Is Treated with Discourtesy

[Barack Obama's] first meeting [with Russia's Vladimir Putin] was marked by a nearly hourlong lecture by Mr. Putin about all the ways the United States had offended Moscow. At their second, Mr. Putin kept Mr. Obama waiting 30 minutes.

Even the New York Times is forced to admit that Barack "smart diplomacy" Obama often gets the cold shoulder abroad, as Mark Landler and Peter Baker report on "very blunt conversation[s]" and "bruising encounters", given that the Apologizer-in-Chief's "main counterparts on the world stage are not his friends, and they make little attempt to cloak their disagreements in diplomatic niceties."

While tangling with the leaders of two cold war antagonists of the United States is nothing new, the two bruising encounters in such a short span underscore a hard reality for Mr. Obama as he heads deeper into a second term that may come to be dominated by foreign policy: his main counterparts on the world stage are not his friends, and they make little attempt to cloak their disagreements in diplomatic niceties. 

Even his friends are not always so friendly. On Wednesday, for example, the president is to meet in Berlin with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, who has invited him to deliver a speech at the Brandenburg Gate. But Ms. Merkel is also expected to press Mr. Obama about the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs, which offend privacy-minded Germans. 

For all of his effort to cultivate personal ties with foreign counterparts over the last four and a half years — the informal “shirt-sleeves summit” with Mr. Xi was supposed to nurture a friendly rapport that White House aides acknowledge did not materialize — Mr. Obama has complicated relationships with some, and has bet on others who came to disappoint him. 

“In Europe, especially, Obama was welcomed with open arms, and some people had unrealistic expectations about him,” said R. Nicholas Burns, a longtime senior American diplomat. Noting that Mr. Obama continued some unpopular policies like the use of drones, he said, “People don’t appreciate that American interests continue from administration to administration.”

 … Mr. Obama spent nearly four years befriending Mr. Putin’s predecessor, Dmitri A. Medvedev, hoping to build him up as a counterweight to Mr. Putin. That never happened, and Mr. Obama now finds himself back at square one with a Russian leader who appears less likely than ever to find common ground with the United States on issues like Syria. 

… “You don’t need to be buddies with someone to establish an effective relationship,” said Mr. Burns, who now teaches at Harvard. “Not everyone can be Roosevelt and Churchill forming a personal bond to end the Second World War.”

Even with friends, however, there is tension. President François Hollande of France was initially thrilled with Mr. Obama because he saw him as an ally against Ms. Merkel on economic issues.

But by the time they met at the Group of 8 summit meeting in Northern Ireland on Tuesday, the relationship had soured, according to French analysts, because France is frustrated that the United States did not do more to help with the war in Mali and resisted a more robust response to Syria. 

Mr. Obama differs from his most recent predecessors, who made personal relationships with leaders the cornerstone of their foreign policies. The first George Bush moved gracefully in foreign capitals, while Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush related to fellow leaders as politicians, trying to understand their pressures and constituencies. 

“That’s not President Obama’s style,” said James B. Steinberg, Mr. Clinton’s deputy national security adviser and Mr. Obama’s deputy secretary of state. 

 … For Mr. Obama, no relationship is more prickly, and yet more significant, than that with Mr. Putin. Mr. Clinton and Mr. Bush forged strong partnerships with their Russian counterparts, Boris Yeltsin and Mr. Putin, respectively. But even that did not prevent ruptures over NATO military action in Kosovo and the Russian war in Georgia. 

Mr. Obama arrived in office determined to invest in Mr. Medvedev, but he underestimated Mr. Putin’s continuing power. Their first meeting was marked by a nearly hourlong lecture by Mr. Putin about all the ways the United States had offended Moscow. At their second, Mr. Putin kept Mr. Obama waiting 30 minutes. 

 … However strained their appearance on Monday, Mr. Obama did not publicly criticize Mr. Putin on human rights or the rule of law. While the White House is frustrated by Russia’s refusal to abandon Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, Mr. Obama has been reluctant to intervene more forcefully on behalf of the rebels.

"Obama did not publicly criticize Mr. Putin on human rights or the rule of law." Well, no, that's something that's reserved for Republicans.

As for R. Nicholas Burns, we mention his FDR quip — “Not everyone can be Roosevelt and Churchill forming a personal bond to end the Second World War” — as we wonder how many media types recall how often they gushed about the One's "smart diplomacy", how often they claimed he was the man to bring respect and love back for America, and how often, precisely, they compared BHO to FDR (if it wasn't to Lincoln, to JFK, or to Reagan).

The EU Stepping In Against Putin’s Russian Bullying Which Flourished Thanks to Lack of Countermeasures From Obama White House?

Hooray for the European Union — in spite of a Nobel Peace Prize awarded largely on the basis of wishful thinking — for taking an important, tough-minded step, avoided by NATO and the United States [i.e., Barack Obama].  

Thus writes John Vinocur, the most conservative commentator working for the New York Times, in the International Herald Tribune.

The bold moment came last month when the European Commission opened an antitrust investigation against Gazprom, the Russian national gas monopoly which furnishes about 25 percent of Europe’s energy imports, for unfair pricing and blocking diversification of supply concerning eight E.U. members from the old Soviet bloc. 

Out of character for an organization once described by Jean-Pierre Jouyet, a former French minister for Europe and France’s former chief financial market supervisor, as dominated by a culture of connivance? I’d like to believe it matters little whether the European Union is being consecrated, even counter-instinctively, as a grand peacemaker, if it is really drawing lines that make clear where its tolerance stops and trouble for transgressors begins. 

The European pursuit of Gazprom as an energy bully has particular resonance because it comes at a time when Vladimir Putin’s Russia is supplying Syria with arms and support in the U.N. Security Council, renouncing a pact with the United States providing nuclear safeguards, ordering the closure of Unicef’s Russian office, and directing the U.S. Agency for International Development to halt its operations in Russia — all without the United States taking countermeasures. 

The E.U. investigation K.O.’s the argument that only born-again cold warriors regard Putin’s actions as serious, strategic problems for the West (starting with a significant measure of Russian control over E.U. and European NATO members’ energy supply). 

The investigation contains an additional message: the European Union’s willingness to challenge Putin’s attempt to play off wealthy Western Europe against poorer Eastern members by offering price flexibility to France and Germany while treating a Poland, a Bulgaria, or an Estonia as if they still fell under the Brezhnev Doctrine. That was the Soviet Union’s notion of its immediate neighbors’ limited sovereignty, reiterated by former president Dmitri Medvedev after Russian troops entered Georgia in 2008. 

Now Moscow, a new member of the World Trade Organization, has issued a decree barring “strategic” enterprises like Gazprom from divulging any information to foreign regulators. 

… just weeks after Barack Obama’s inauguration … NATO was never seriously pressed to pick up the ball. Kurt Volker, the U.S. ambassador to NATO at the time, said the initial American warnings about the energy squeeze involved “smart people who were operating on auto-pilot. Then Obama’s reset kicked in.” 

At its extreme, that meant the United States publicly saying it would not pursue linkage in its Russian policy — telling Putin, in effect, he could do as he pleased, with no price to pay. The E.U. Commission, all the same, has signaled that its limits have been overrun. 

Süddeutsche Zeitung, a leading left-of-center voice, called the investigation a brave strike and “the start of a battle against the power of Russia’s raw materials empire.” And the E.U.’s commissioner for energy, Günther Oettinger, a German conservative, has branded those energy reserves “Putin’s new Red Army,” and criticized Angela Merkel’s announced retreat from atomic energy as increasing Europe’s dependency on Gazprom as a supplier.

… As for Barack Obama, he cannot politically manage a shift in tone on Putin’s Russia with only weeks to go in the U.S. presidential campaign. But with Putin acting aggressively and unrelentingly, the president, if re-elected, could well find it necessary to speak out on the significant deterioration of Russia’s sense of responsibility, and stand up with protesting Russians the next time they fill Moscow’s streets.

Related: Moscow's current tone is "reminiscent of Soviet days"; If anyone is stuck in the Cold War mentality, it is the Russians

Obama's "Friendly" Russians: "Surging anti-American sentiment" in Moscow and its legislators' "unanimous pseudo-patriotic frenzy”

Within hours of Barack Obama's stating, during the third election debate, that we were no longer living in Cold War times — all the while accusing Mitt Romney of wanting to take us back to the 1980s (ah! the Reagan years!) in an era when everything is hunky-dory with the Russians — the New York Times publishes a report from Moscow that states, and indeed does so quite explicitly, that if anyone is living with a Cold War mentality, it is the Russians. 

That is how I started a post written within hours after the third presidential debate, during which that #%$&*&#$ to Mitt Romney refused to make any common-sense arguments against Obama's fairy-tale foreign policy and alleged smart diplomacy.

Excuse my French regarding Mitt, but I just listened to Mark Levin on Barack Obama's press conference — via Instapundit — and that has put me in a not-so-good mood.

Incidentally, another thing Romney should have said during the third debate (during either debate, really), when Obama referred to clueless Americans still thinking of "the Russians" as the enemy, is that Americans have nothing against the Russians, as in the Russian people, and never have had, it turns out, even — da, da, tovarich — during the Cold War. It is not splitting hairs to insist that what America has been on guard against before, and should be on guard against now, is the attitude of the Russian leaders, the attitude of the Kremlin — especially with both its foreign policy's anti-Western stance and its domestic policy's anti-democracy stance, presently as well as in Soviet times during the Cold War.

Why is that so hard for leftists like the Barack Obama to understand?!
And why is, why was, that so hard for conservatives like Romney to voice?!

(Of course, the answer to the first question is that the only enemy that the Apologizer-in-Chief recognizes in his leftist fairy tale world are conservative Americans, whose voices must be drowned out and who must be neutered.)

Now we have more — from Ellen Barry:
 

The members of Russia’s lower house of Parliament — which last year passed so many harsh new laws with so little debate that commentators compared it to a “rabid printer” — returned to work last week as the standard-bearers for President Vladimir V. Putin’s brand of patriotism.

Having captured the world’s attention in December by banning all adoptions of Russian children by American families, members of Parliament have dreamed up a variety of further proposals to purge Russian politics and civic life of foreign influences. 

Among them: A full ban on all foreign adoption. A requirement that the children of Russian officials return directly to Russia after studying abroad, lest their parent lose his or her post. A requirement that officials’ children be barred from studying abroad altogether. A requirement that movie theaters screen Russian-made films no less than 20 percent of the time, or face fines as high as 400,000 rubles, or about $13,000.

One group of legislators is working on a bill that would prevent anyone with foreign citizenship, including Russians, from criticizing the government on television. One proposal would ban the use of foreign driver’s licenses, another would require officials to drive Russian-made cars. One deputy has recommended strictly limiting marriages between Russian officials and foreigners, at least those from states that were not formerly Soviet.

So who is it who is adopting a hostile stance, Barack Obama?!
Who is it who is doing the flag-waving and being paranoid?!
Is it really Americans?! Really?!

Many of these ideas sound eccentric, in a capital city whose elite are well-traveled and integrated into the West, and are very unlikely to advance and become law. But they certainly will not hurt anyone’s career in the current political environment.

So who is it who is adopting a hostile stance, Barack Obama?!
Who is it who is doing the flag-waving and being paranoid?!

“You know, there is a principle in questions of patriotism or protecting the interests of the country, as the authorities see it, that it’s better to overdo it than to show weakness,” said Aleksei V. Makarkin, an analyst at the Center for Political Technologies in Moscow. “If you try too hard, and come up with some exotic, scandalous draft law, you are in any case one of us. Maybe you are too emotional — you’re a patriot.”

Since Mr. Putin’s inauguration, the Duma, the lower house of Parliament, has hurriedly passed a series of initiatives tightening the state’s control over dissent and political activism: it has steeply increased fines for Russians who take part in unauthorized protests; required nonprofit organizations to register as “foreign agents” if they receive money from overseas; reinstated criminal penalties for slander; and vastly expanded the definition of treason to include assisting international organizations.

When the adoption ban passed, cutting off all adoptions of Russian children by Americans, only four deputies out of 406 voted against it, with 400 voting for it and two abstaining. Grigory A. Yavlinsky, the founder of the liberal party Yabloko, described the vote on his blog as “a unanimous pseudo-patriotic frenzy.” 

 … Yevgeny N. Minchenko, director of the International Institute for Political Expertise, said the major pieces of legislation that passed through the Duma last year were produced by staff members in Mr. Putin’s administration. Last year, he said, demonstrated that the Parliament serves as an “instrument” of the Kremlin.

“Unfortunately, in my view, there is a dangerous trend that practically the only way to consolidate all the parliamentary factions is with various kinds of anti-Western initiatives,” Mr. Minchenko said.

So who is it who is adopting a hostile stance, Barack Obama?!
Who is it who is doing the flag-waving and being paranoid?!

Mr. Putin has made patriotism a central theme of his third presidential term, and Yevgeny A. Fyodorov, a United Russia deputy, said strengthening Russia’s sovereignty is now the Duma’s “most important direction.”

Mr. Fyodorov said he would like to see the Constitution amended to allow for a national ideology, something that is now explicitly excluded in the text, but concedes that this will take time. He said the adoption ban — or, as he called it, “the ban on the export of children” — signaled the beginning of a major effort to “strengthen Russia’s sovereignty” by purging foreign influences on civic life.

“You know the saying — we saddle up slowly, but we ride fast,” he said. “The U-turn has just begun, and the most radical steps, including the ones connected to the Constitution, will take place in three or four years.”

Mr. Fyodorov, whose proposal to bar government officials from keeping property overseas has won some support in the Kremlin, said any permanent ties between government officials and foreign countries — a child residing abroad, or a spouse with property outside Russia — constitute a “factor of distrust” that, according to legislation passed last year, can now serve as grounds for an official’s dismissal. The long-term task, he said, “is to gradually reformat the elite to fit the national mood.”

“The existence of a strong connection between an official and foreign countries — I formulate this broadly — is a factor of distrust,” Mr. Fyodorov said.

This mission is complicated by the fact that Moscow’s ruling class is, in fact, already deeply integrated into Western Europe. One leader of the legislative campaign, a United Russia deputy, Sergei Zheleznyak, was pilloried by a blogger, Aleksei Navalny, because his daughters study at exclusive institutions in Switzerland and Britain. Nevertheless, the Kremlin has determined that officials’ foreign holdings must be brought under control, because they are alienating the public, said Sergei A. Markov, a political analyst who served as a legislator with United Russia until last year.

“The population considers the elite to be half-foreign,” he said. “Their property is abroad, their houses are abroad, their wives are abroad, their children are abroad. Even Russian industrialists work through offshore companies. Why do these people run Russia, they say.”

The proposals are bound to raise eyebrows in the West [except in Barack Obama's White House], but they are actually driven by domestic politics, analysts said. Mr. Minchenko noted that even as anti-American sentiment surged in the Duma this fall, Mr. Putin has avoided damaging steps like closing the NATO transit point in Ulyanovsk. He called the legislative campaign “carefully dosed” to avoid permanently hurting bilateral relations.

His colleague, Mr. Makarkin, was less sanguine.

“Those initiatives which yesterday seemed exotic could become reality tomorrow; we saw this happen last year,” he said. “The most important thing is, there are practically no limitations.”

Purging Russian politics and civic life of foreign influences.

Various kinds of anti-Western initiatives.

Surging anti-American sentiment.

A "unanimous pseudo-patriotic frenzy."

So who is it who is adopting a hostile stance, Barack Obama?!
Who is it who is doing the flag-waving and being paranoid?!

See four years of NP posts on Obama caving in to the Kremlin (or to "the Russians",
people who obviously represent no danger to America and to the West at all)…

Smart Diplomacy: For 1st Time, Putin Officially Names the U.S. as a Threat

A new appraisal names the United States as one of the threats to Russia's national security for the first time

writes Vladimir Soldatkin at Thomson Reuters,

a sign of how relations with the west have deteriorated in recent years

in addition to being a piece of news which must surely be an homage to the apologizer-in-chief's brilliant forward-looking policy of smart diplomacy (Update: spasiba to Instapundit).

The document, "About the Strategy of National Security of Russian Federation", was signed by President Vladimir Putin on New Year's Eve. It replaces a 2009 version, endorsed by then-President Dmitry Medvedev, the current prime minister, which mentioned neither the United States not NATO.

 … Relations between Russia and the West reached a low after Russian forces annexed the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine in March 2014, after protests in Ukraine forced its pro-Moscow president to flee to Russia.

Reminder: Back during the 2008 election campaign, Sarah Palin was vilified for saying another incredibly dimwitted thing, that the election of a pacifist like Barack Obama to the White House

would only encourage Russia’s Putin to invade Ukraine next.

(Gratefully, intelligent people like those writing for Foreign Policy were around to remind everybody that in fact, such an invasion was, and is, "an extremely far-fetched scenario.")

A "sign of how relations with the west have deteriorated in recent years" is the Thomson Reuters journalist's wording of choice.

"In recent years," Vladimir Soldatkin?! "Recent"?!

You might read some blogs once in a while, Vlad. Over there, in your MSM office. And their posts.

Such as:
• Four years of NP posts on Obama caving in to the Kremlin (2011)
• Moscow's tone is "reminiscent of Soviet days";
If anyone is stuck in the Cold War mentality, it is the Russians (2012)
• Smart Diplomacy: "Surging anti-American sentiment" in Moscow
and its legislators' "unanimous pseudo-patriotic frenzy” (2013)
• Smart Diplomacy: what is happening in Eastern Europe
now is as much Obama’s fault as it is Putin’s (2014)
• Have U.S. Relations with Russia Reverted to The Same Type as Those
During the Cold War That Obama Once Mocked Romney For? (2015)
• The Fruits of Smart Diplomacy: For the First Time Since the
Cold War, the U.S. Stations Heavy Weapons in Eastern Europe (2015)
• Advice to the Republican Hopefuls and to Other Leaders and Members of the GOP (2015)

For decades, the Kremlin has accused NATO of encircling, threatening, oppressing Russia… accusing the West of exactly what Putin is doing to his neighbors, who are not his vassals but countries liberated from centuries of Russian yoke

On the Dreuz website, Evelyne Joslain comments on the Russian invasion of 2022: Tandis que l’Ukraine agonise. A radio host at the Libre journal du Nouveau Monde on Radio Courtoisie, Evelyne Joslain is the author of a handful of French books on the United States. (See also The Economist's The New Russian Cult of War and the take of a famed Russian political prisoner and exile…)

The West is united behind Zelinsky, at least as far as fine words are concerned. We are overwhelmed by emotions, but as for the determination to defend the West, it is non-existent. Only volunteer fighters from all our democracies, who have spontaneously committed themselves to defending Ukraine and our civilization, are saving our honor. For, make no mistake about it, Putin is not going to stop at the borders of Ukraine. This Third World War that we so much want to avoid has already begun.

Even if the Kremlin were stopped, China and Iran would miraculously remain, since we are faced with a new Axis of Evil which has patiently built itself up and is not hiding its aspirations to destroy not only the EU (which would hardly be a drama) but also NATO and the USA as the world's foremost power. The Axis wants a New World Order, with its currency, its international banking system, its laws... Would that suit all those, American as well as foreign, who have railed against "American imperialism" for decades?

Recall that Beijing and Moscow both have veto power at the UN (a resolutely anti-West body that serves no purpose except to comfort dictators), where both enjoy an absurd commercially-protected nation status. True enough, the Russian and Chinese countrysides belong fully in the Third World, but we are not supposed to know that. As for the third Axis, Tehran, the same Westerners who scold Putin in front of the television cameras are, behind Vienna's closed doors, busy with the Russians and the CCP polishing Obama's resurrected Iran Deal. Obama had wanted this agreement out of sheer infatuation for the Islamists. Biden desperately wants it back (and to hell with Congress, a presidential order will do) because it is fine to take oil from dictators and enemies of the United States (all of them) but in no case, Heaven forbid, from American producers.

There is no more anti-American and traitorous to their country than the current American left, and nothing more hypocritical and absurd than state environmentalism, the primary concern of Western leaders. As for the ayatollahs, they demanded and obtained from the squatter of the White House that it be a Russian, Mikhail Ulyanov, who does the negotiating for the United States! This shows the seriousness that Biden gives to martyred Ukraine: the "Ukrainian crisis", as he calls it, is an annoying setback (for leftists, everything is "crisis" and therefore good for exploitation, which he does).

Note also that, just like for the first Iran Deal, no regional power is invited to participate: this takes place only between China, Russia, France, the United Kingdom, and Germany. This agreement is essentially for the benefit of Iran: to pull it out of the isolation where its unacceptable methods have placed it. No advantage for Westerners, except for politicians and for a few big companies, therefore very special interests — "one hell of a bonanza to rake in"… As for the nuclear bomb, given the time that they've been fooling the IAEA's inspectors, the Iranians probably already have it.

We are also confounded by the treachery of Macron and Johnson, bound like Biden, to respect the Budapest Memorandum solemnly signed by their respective countries in 1994, that is to say to ensure the territorial integrity of Ukraine in exchange for the docile surrender of its nuclear weapons. Instead, our leaders are in a rush to get back to business and deepen our dependence on hostile powers. The sanctions only affect 2/3 of the Russian economy. Above all, NATO's military force depends on the occupant of the White House (through the blame lies on the shoulders of the Europeans who have done nothing to acquire within the Alliance armies worthy of the name, with the exception of France, Turkey, and Great Britain). But above all, Biden is anything but a leader: corrupt to the core, he is involved in Mafia affairs with Ukrainians, Russians, and Chinese, so he's in their pockets. All being show biz, the media conceals these inconvenient truths and focus on the tragedy of Ukraine which is dying.

Putin probes the softness of a largely decadent, de-virilized, and pathetic West, which finds all the technical excuses not to get involved. After 25 days of aggression-invasion, money is flowing into Ukraine but not the really “offensive” weapons it demands, only “defensive” weapons. We therefore limply support a war that we believe to be lost in advance because we fear that a Putin who cannot afford to back down will use a missile to settle the seizure of Ukraine. We give in to Putin's nuclear blackmail without realizing that he is playing games with us. He made it clear that balancing by mutual deterrence was obsolete by 2020.

We are therefore terrified for reasons for which we are completely responsible: the West has unilaterally disarmed, both with regards to conventional and nuclear forces, the United States and the European Union (thanks to the idol, Obama, Russia has 1,500 nuclear warheads, twice that of the USA). And they have also unilaterally dispossessed themselves of their fossil fuels, preferring to give them all 1 billion dollars a day for Russian gas, obeying the dictates of frenzied ecologists.

For Putin, the situation was ideal: in the United States, the coming to power by fraud of a particularly shabby and destructive trio: Biden, Harris, Pelosi, the top three honchos in the nation, amply proved to what degree they are unworthy of their functions. Another major figure of the West and NATO are Canada's Trudeau who, like Biden, has shown his totalitarian streak, one against his own people; Britain's Boris Johnson, often more buffoonish than Prime Minister; and France's Macron who supports Ukraine by disguising himself as Zelinsky. And none of the above have denied their involvement in environmental fraud, quite the contrary: any "way out of the crisis" goes through the "green transition", they say, first Covid later the "Ukrainian crisis".

Who dares to counter them? Half of America is willing, but hardly any of the deeply indoctrinated Europeans. In polls, environmentalism is the third concern of the French just after their purchasing power and their health. Not a presidential candidate in France (which has become a non-event) who does not sacrifice to this heresy! They even all have a specific green program, even if it is obviously the left that leads the way since environmentalism is nothing but re-distributionist Marxism. Ignoring the most basic decency, environmentalists even organized demonstrations all over France on Saturday March 12, to protest the "appalling" fact that Ukraine was capturing all the media attention to the alleged detriment of the planet...

Environmentalism, that suicidal madness, a sad Western exception that amazes all the other countries on the planet that cannot be blamed for profiting from so much stupidity. The truth emerges about Putin: if Ukraine has a level of corruption equal to that of Russia, Putin is nevertheless the aggressor and demonstrates how he is nothing European. He is completely penetrated by the Eurasian theses of Alexandr Dugin, theses which adapt very well to all Asian and Muslim elements, uniting them in the same hatred of the West and in the same Neo-Eurasianist supremacy.

Moreover, "Mad Vlad" reveals his medieval mentality and his Asian fiber: he is both Attila the Hun and Yvan the Terrible. And he hasn't changed as his last defenders would like to believe, he finally lets himself be seen as he is, perhaps because he is about to celebrate his 70th birthday and wants to ensure his legacy, perhaps because he is sick (his swollen figure suggests heavy treatments), or simply because he will not always have the windfall of a Biden in front of him.

If the West can come to its senses in time, nothing should be given to Putin. He must give back everything he has wrongfully acquired — Crimea, the seas, the provinces — and be condemned to reparations for the approximately 200 billion dollars of damage he and his armies have caused. For human suffering and his crimes, he must be tried by a special tribunal. For decades, the Kremlin has accused NATO of encircling, threatening, oppressing Russia… accusing the West of exactly what Putin himself is doing to his neighbors, who are not his vassals but countries liberated from centuries of Russian yoke. 

It is about time for NATO to give some push-back, with teeth, to this tiresome neo-Soviet propaganda.

The juxtaposition of the law-breaking, but melodious, Obama administration next to boisterous and rowdy Trump presidency teaches us a lesson about our own moral blindness

[The] weird juxtaposition of the vacuous and often law-breaking, but melodious, Obama administration next to boisterous and rowdy Trump presidency has taught us a lesson about our own moral blindness.

Both our media and popular culture, as well as our cultural elite, value style far more than substance. Adroitly breaking the law is preferable to obeying it in uncivilized fashion. Boorishly bragging nonstop about 3 percent economic growth and below-4-percent unemployment is deemed far worse than contextualizing in professorial tones a stagnant economy that in eight years never achieved 3 percent annual growth.

Credentials empower illegality; their mere absence is seen as almost illegal in itself.

Lawlessly “presidential” is a misdemeanor; lawfully unpresidential, a felony. A bankrupt agenda delivered by experts is sanctified; an effective one packaged by amateurs is heretical.

Having engaged in illegality during the Obama administration is better on a résumé than following the law in a Trump government.

And yet still, this one constant keeps reverberating throughout the hysteria: Our elite always values the messenger over the message.

The façade of Camelot exempts empty lawlessness in a way that Queens-accented boosterism seems to nullify real achievement.

That is how Victor Davis Hanson concludes his National Review piece (thanks to Ann Althouse and Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds).

Call the Trump paradox “crass lawfulness.” What drives Trump’s critics nearly crazy is not any evidence that Trump has broken federal laws per se. Instead, their rub is that there are somehow no criminal statutes against a president boorishly acting “unpresidential” in his loud quest to supercharge the economy, while undoing the entire agenda of his predecessor, who was so dearly beloved by the media, universities, Hollywood, and identity-politics groups.

Certainly, President Obama’s teleprompted speeches were mellifluous. As some sort of postmodern preacher, Obama often sermonized to Americans about the predetermined “arc of history” that purportedly bent all of us inescapably toward his own just moral version of the universe.

In calm, ministerial tones, the progressive Obama sometimes slapped a puerile America’s wrists, with frequent admonitions to behave and to not act so illiberally. Or he frequently reminded us, with a frown, “that is not who we are.” Recall that Obama came into office promising that he would could lower the seas and cool the planet, with a generation of young like-minded activists who, we were lectured, were the ones we had all been waiting for. Now president emeritus Obama worries that perhaps his messianic appearance came too soon for us to fully appreciate his divinity.

Despite Obama’s recent projection that his eight-year tenure was “scandal-free,” along with the reality that the media’s biased compliance sought to make such a startling fantasy true, the Obama administration was in many respects lawless. It will eventually rank as the most scandal-ridden administration since Warren G. Harding’s.

Go to the National Review link to read the full list of The Scandals of the ‘Scandal-Free’ Obama Administration

But it was during the 2016 election cycle that the Obama administration descended to a level of corruption not seen in a century. Right in the middle of the FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email server, Obama, as judge and jury, announced that candidate Clinton had violated no criminal law while secretary of state. Obama also lied when he stated that he’d known nothing about such an unlawful server, although emails prove that he himself had communicated over it on several occasions.

His FBI director, James Comey, deliberately scrambled the law and exonerated Hillary Clinton from wrongdoing, not because she had not broken the law, but, according to Comey’s own invented interpretations of the statute, because she had not intended to violate the law. Comey also admitted to tailoring his circus-like investigation of Clinton around the assumption that she would soon be president.

We are slowly appreciating over the last year that lying under oath was an Obama-administration requisite for a high position in the intelligence community. FBI director Comey lied about the particular sequences of his investigation of the Clinton email scandal. He lied by omission to the president when, in his supposed Oval Office informative dissection of the Steele dossier, he failed to include the fact that it was a product of Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the DNC.

 … In addition to such unethical and often illegal behavior, the Obama administration institutionalized deception as a tool of government: hiding from the American people all the side agreements to the so-called Iran deal, itself a blatant effort to bypass the treaty-making responsibilities of the U.S. Senate; fabricating yarns to sell the disastrous Obamacare takeover of health care; using executive orders to enact immigration amnesties after warning that doing just that would be unconstitutional; lying repeatedly about the circumstances of the Bowe Bergdahl prisoner swap.

Hillary Clinton has never been able to explain why huge gifts to her family’s foundation from Russian interests coincided with the State Department’s approval of uranium sales to Russia, or why anyone would ever pay her husband $500,000 for a short speech in Moscow — and certainly would not now once her political ambitions have at last calcified.

We live in such strange times that the media ignored the most blatant examples of presidential campaign-cycle collusion in memory, while seeking to invent it where it never existed. Remember, Barack Obama on a hot mic not only got caught reiterating to a Russian leader the conditions of Putin-Obama election-cycle collusion, but he also spelled out the exact quid pro quo: promised Russian quietude abroad during Obama’s reelection campaign was in exchange for “flexibility” (i.e., cancellation) of U.S.-Eastern European missile-defense projects. Should Trump ever be caught making the same “deal” in 2020, he would probably be impeached.

Criminal Camelot vs. Crude Queens

Why was the Obama administration so corrupt?

Three reasons stand out.
One, it was the first administration in modern history in which the media saw its role as a subordinate and accomplice rather than an auditor; the media thereby empowered corruption.
Two, it exuded a moral zealousness in its promise to fundamentally transform the country and enact social justice; any means of doing so were justified by its exalted ends.
Three, like the John F. Kennedy administration, Obama and his team adroitly calculated that in America’s celebrity culture, what’s hip and cool is often more highly prized than what’s competent and lawful, much less crude and effective.

No one would suggest that Donald Trump obeys the law because he has an inherent respect for the Constitution and the nation’s ethical bearings, although that perhaps could prove to be so. Rather, Trump has not broken the law the way that Obama routinely did quite simply because he cannot. The media is so hostile to his every act, the popular culture has so frequently written him off as crude, and his critics, both progressive and conservative, have become so hysterical over his person, that he lives in a singular 24/7 bubble that faults him for everything from his choice of dessert to the manner in which his daughter holds her child.

The news, both fake and real, is now all Trump, all the time. And because Trump can enjoy baiting his opponents by deliberately being uncouth and coarse, and since he has little respect for past presidential protocol, almost everything is now transparent and nothing is off-limits. …

Obama's "Space", "Flexibility", and Concessions in Relation to Syria During an Election Year: "Iran has won the round and Russia was its accomplice”

Last week, John Vinocur asked the French defense minister how he now would describe the circumstances in Syria.

[Gérard Longuet's] frankness was startling: “Iran has won the round and Russia was its accomplice.”

… As little as a month ago, the Obama administration was talking about the imminent departure of Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s leader. His ouster would have been a vast blow to Iran, which regards Assad as its closest ally and buffer.

But the West buckled in the face of Russian and Chinese resistance, withdrawing its U.N. Security Council draft resolution that demanded that Assad leave and that Russia halt its supply of arms to Syria. No substantive Western action followed. Assad remains. This is a terrible precedent.

The most conservative commentator working for the New York Times has a column in the International Herald Tribune that is far from optimistic and that can be called another pronouncement on Barack Obama's Smart Diplomacy as well as on the O's subsuming all initiatives, foreign as well as domestic, to that most important of measures for the American nation, Obama's campaign for a second term.

Bad news: the Obama administration and the West hold a lousy hand as they go into talks with Iran.

In a world of dreams and miracles, the conversations, starting Saturday, would end with the mullahs renouncing their drive toward nuclear weapons, and the disappearance of a thunderhead of foreboding and grief.

Reality says otherwise, three ways.

It demonstrates that the Iranians are emboldened by the West’s backing off in Syria. It acknowledges that some of the allies have serious concerns about Barack Obama’s willingness to make concessions and stretch out the talks, playing for time, Iranian-style, until after the U.S. presidential election. And it imposes the conclusion that there is no visible way these so-called confidence building exchanges (don’t call them negotiations) can produce confidence solid enough for the United States, Britain, France and Germany to believe that Iran is willing to cast aside the nuclear military program they accuse it of running.

… the Obama administration has left its European counterparts with a virtual certainty: that it wants the talks to extend until Election Day, Nov. 4. This is based on the flimsy premise that Israel will be reluctant to strike Iran as long as the talks continue.

Yet the administration’s approach to the conversations does not include a clear exit strategy, which intensifies the likelihood of their dawdling futility.

The French, in this context, are describing themselves as “guardians of the temple,” meaning that they have suspicions of U.S. concessions that would bend or skirt the Security Council’s requirements for the mullahs to prove their total disengagement from pursuing nukes. (Think, in the worst case, of a triangular deal with Russia and Iran reflecting Mr. Obama’s on-mike appeal to Vladimir Putin for “space” in exchange for “flexibility” on missile defense.)

Hoping for a New Fürerprinzip

Odd, isn’t it that when the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to a leader of government or governmental organization, it’s intent is to try to swing in one direction or another the motives of a dictator or disliked figure who presents themselves as being able to be persuaded to change their ways. Past nominees of the Nobel Peace Prize have included Josef Stalin and Adolf Hitler for just that presumed reason.

In light of this, the Nobel Peace Prize being awarded to Barack Obama for having made a few statements here and there on things he is unlikely to act on comes as something of a surprise, unless you look at it as a measure taken by members of that committee to influence the internal politics of sovereign nation states. The problem here is that the US is not a dictatorship. The award is a telegraphing of political opinion which may have been more venal and reactionary than ‘aspirational’, spending heavily the capital of it’s past legitimacy.

The recent trend in Europe, the region where the likes of the Nobel Committees imagines as representing world opinion, has been to a rejection of leftism, and this award may me a sort of political influence “twofer” in opposition of those societies who voted to make it that way.

Sarkozy was elected with a firm mandate, Merkel was re-elected, Cameron seems like a practical shoe-in, and so forth. So the message transmitted from the rarified air of that northern latitude to democratic practitioners of their own choices is to fall into line. It’s sad to see that they have mounted this kind of effort on the pluralistic societies of the world to the willful ignorance of places like Belarus and the racketeer-like leadership succession practices of Russia.

As to the pretext of reducing nuclear weapons stockpiles, and channeling the dream of a world without peaceful deterrents, you have to wonder if they are really giving it to the right guy:

On the eve of this week's summit between President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin, negotiators from both countries huddled in New York Sunday to hash out a plan to substantially reduce their arsenals of nuclear warheads.

Secretary of State Colin Powell and U.S. arms specialists and their Russian counterparts were trying to work out details of how to make deep but uneven cuts in their stockpiles of nuclear arms in the next 10 years or more.

Putin arrives in Washington Monday night and will meet with Bush Tuesday to continue discussions over ways to reduce the number of offensive nuclear weapons. The two leaders are simultaneously working out a weapons negotiation blueprint that may allow Bush to proceed with his plans for a missile defense system.

"We see the capability to negotiate on the U.S. side and we have the same capability, but we want to know what we'll be negotiating about, in military and technological terms," Putin told a group of American journalists at the Kremlin in Moscow before departing for the U.S.

The two leaders begin their summit in Washington, but White House officials have suggested they would announce any agreements later at Bush's ranch near Crawford, Texas.

Bush is hoping to announce cuts of about two-thirds, from 6,000 warheads to about 2,000 on the U.S. side, when he and Putin meet. The reductions would be verified under guidelines established under previous nuclear treaties.

The entire affair was derided by those passionate about arms reduction as Putin and Bush playing a child’s game of cowboys and Indians on his ranch in Crawford, Texas, but the arms control ‘achievement’ being attributed to Mr. Obama, something he announced too shortly after entering office to have actually accomplished with his shambolically under-organized early administration, was not his at all, but a statement by a man they seek to turn into a Manchurian Candidate for their world view is sufficient for their Prize and their admiration.

In a summit that was said to "end a long chapter of confrontation," Presidents Vladimir Putin of Russia and George W. Bush of the United States met in Moscow on May 24, 2002, where they signed the Treaty on Strategic Offensive Reductions. Hailed as the beginning of a new relationship between the former Cold War foes, the Treaty calls for each state to reduce its deployed strategic nuclear weapons to approximately one third of the current level.

Which is all Obama will ever get, however much anybody believe that a few words from his lips will start a decades-long love parade leading to the Russians and Americans having NO nukes, while India, Iran, Israel, Pakistan, France, and the UK will likely serrupititiously retain theirs’, despite what they say when their lips are moving. No-one will be making arms verification trips to Pierrelatte.

Among the very dependable ‘known knowns’ of those who pretend to speak for the larger opinion of the world, is that the more they dislike America and Americans, the greater a need they feel to support Barack Obama. What the Nobel committee seeks is a conformity of opinion on the part of world leaders, even if they are accidental ones, to limit the diversity that makes man who he is, and the tension in opinion that maintains the breadth of ideas that keep us all safely in check.

Expect it to only get 'better' as time goes by for this academy award of political influence peddling:

Among those who have the right to nominate candidates for the coveted award are parliamentarians, academics, former peace prize laureates as well as current and former members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

Dissecting Some of the Questions that Daily Kos Asked Self-Identifed Republicans

The Daily Kos poll of Self-Identified Republicans seems to be creating quite a stir — "The results are nothing short of startling" exclaims Markos Moulitsas Zúñiga (better known as Kos) — especially given the fact that the questions seem straight-forward.

But the Research 2000 for Daily Kos questions (1/20-31) to Self-identified Republicans (MoE 2%) are not as straight-forward as they look at first sight, and how you phrase a question can bring a vast variety in the answers. (For instance, there is a difference between asking "Do you think Bush was right to start a(n illegal) war?", "Do you think the U.S. Army was right to invade (Saddam Hussein's) Iraq?", and "Do you think the United States was right to overthrow a dictator (who had killed 300,000 of his fellow citizens)?" Note that each question changes even more by simply adding — or, alternatively, removing — the respective phrase in parentheses.)

As I will be pointing out below, the main problem here is with either-or questions in which neither option is entirely satisfactory. The answers therefore help Kos make those questioned look ridiculous. Often, by voicing a question stating the exact opposite of what the original question is saying, you sense the problem with that original question — since the (unmentioned) alternative is unpalatable, or even more unpalatable, the person questioned has little choice but to accept the question, incongruous as it may be. As a matter of fact, I have reason to believe that in any case, these questions were reframed after they were asked in order to make Republicans look ridiculous — make them look more Taliban-like — but since I have no proof of this, I do not dwell into the issue. The conclusion (as I write later on): If you really want to get to know the population or a segment thereof (rather than make a caricature of them), it makes more sense to frame your queries as if they were multiple-choice questions.

As I've mentioned before, I'm putting the finishing touches on my new book, American Taliban, which catalogues the ways in which modern-day conservatives share the same agenda as radical Jihadists in the Islamic world.

As Ann Althouse states, "It turns out this poll was designed to help him with that theory." ("As far as Research2000 is concerned," according to a commentator on Althouse's post, "they had Coakley over Brown 49-41 on January 14th. So they were wrong by 13 points 5 days before that election.")

Should Barack Obama be impeached, or not?

Yes 39
No 32
Not Sure 29

For what? Who the heck knows.

The exact reverse of this question might sound something like "Has Barack Obama done nothing wrong — not a single thing — has he, in fact, been right on the money every time during his first year in the White House?" Now, this may come as a surprise for America's (and the planet's) blame-America-firsters, but for one thing a number of people do not think the nation's commander-in-chief should act as the nation's apologist-in-chief (for instance bowing to foreign monarchs). For another, some of us remember Obama's wanting (or, rather, his followers wanting) to change the U.S. Constitution so that he could be reelected endlessly, winning more than two elections (apparently — in the best of worlds — ending up as president-for-life). How about the attempts to take over one sixth of the economy and to ram that law through Congress — and down the American people's collective throats — with no input from the opposition, from the American people, and, indeed, from his own party members (this, in direct contradiction — I mention this for all the people who love the idea of impeaching an American president for his alleged lies — of his campaign promises concerning CSPAN's cameras)?

And how about Obama's wars on Fox News and talk radio, along with changes to the FCC rules which would make it harder for the latter to survive, which, even if his followers lap it up, strikes some of us as an attack on the First Amendment? Those may or may not warrant impeachment per se, but certainly it makes it understandable that some people think that those acts should be opposed with the (legal) weapons at hand… (PS: for those who think that conservatives' domination of the airwaves is truly a travesty, please realize that it is a reaction to liberal domination of the newspapers and to liberal domination of the TV networks…)

Do you think Barack Obama is a socialist?

Yes 63
No 21
Not Sure 16

That's the power of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, after one year of relentlessly claiming Obama is the second coming of Lenin ... and Hitler!

If anybody has made anybody seem like the second coming of Hitler, it isn't the Republicans with Obama; it is the Democrats (and their like-minded European brethren) with George W Bush.

More to the point, the reason Kos can make Republicans seem lame-brained here is because the question, "Do you think Barack Obama is a socialist?", makes it sound like people are being asked if they think the most preeminent member of America's Democratic Party is (really or otherwise) a full-fledged, card-carrying member of a totally different party (the Socialist Party) — "the second coming of Lenin", in Kos's leering words — but when you think about it (the obverse question would be "Do you think Barack Obama is not a socialist at all?"), isn't the underlying question, obviously — the one that people are indeed answering — has Barack Obama behaved, is he behaving (at least part of the time), like a socialist would?

How wrong (or how allegedly lame-brained) is it (for "homegrown teabaggers" or others) to refer to a man as a socialist when that man has taken over General Motors — whether or not you agree with that — and who has attempted— again, whether or not you agree with that — to take over a sixth of the economy? During which time, he and the Socialist — sorry, the Democratic — heads of the House and the Senate (remember when they passed the stimulus bill with no input from either the opposing party or the members of their own party?) tried to get the whole deal decided behind closed doors with a handful of actors, acting almost as if the country were a one-party state. (To return to the previous question, how inane does the threat of impeachment become in this case?) Notice that I haven't even mentioned Obama's support for (or lack of a stand against) known socialist strongmen such as the Castro brothers, Hugo Chávez, and their like-minded brethren…

"Given what their base demands, and this poll illustrates them perfectly, it's no wonder the GOP is the party of no" writes Kos, and he's damn right: when we see all these takeover attempts, we do say No — and we do so proudly — and we want our elected representatives to say No. "No" is not — necessarily — a sign of virulence and resentment: "No" can be a sign of logic, of common sense, and of (rightful) resistance.

Do you believe Barack Obama was born in the United States, or not?

Yes 42
No 36
Not Sure 22

We still have over a half of Republicans who don't think Obama was born in the US or think it's a matter open to debate.

It may well be that most of the writings concerning the wherabouts of Obama's birth sound delusional, but, as far as I can tell, James L Lambert's arguments are far from nonsensical… There are two problems with the alleged deluded "Birther" conspiracy that are overseen by Kos (and everywhere else). They are, first, that the real, original "long" birth certificate never seems to have materialized (the certificate of live birth being, and please correct me if I'm mistaken, a recent production); second, that to believe that an American citizen born to a foreign father who lived much of his childhood abroad may indeed have been born in a foreign country is not that far-fetched.

[Update: Not until April 2011 did the White House finally release Barack Obama's original birth certificate.]

Indeed, the difference between the Truthers and the Birthers is that in the first case, we are being asked to believe that 1) hundreds, if not thousands, of government officials were approached with a view to conspire to kill thousands of their fellow citizens, all (or most) of them innocent civilians, that 2) hundreds, if not thousands, of government officials agreed (apparently without a moment of hesitation) to conspire to murder thousands of innocent civilians, and that 3) none of these hundreds (thousands) of government officials has ever had a single, even fleeting feeling of remorse, or let the cat out of the bag, say while having too much to drink (no remorse?) during a Saturday outing to a local bar.

In the second case, we do not even have a conspiracy, but basically one single man telling a falsehood — although it might even be termed a lie of omission — a lie about what offhand is a personal matter, but has turned into the only thing (allegedly) keeping him from power (Update: The New York Times' Double Standard on Conspiracy Theories).

Most damning of all, when you pause to think of it, the castigators' proof — if it can be called that — all lies in one fact (beyond the recently released certificate of live birth): and that fact is that Obama is a man, a person whose word should never be doubted, who is capable of no lying, no evil, no chicanery. If he tells you that, say, he is a Christian, then how dare you deny he is a religious man?! How dare you imply that he is a Muslim?! How dare you state he is a socialist?!

The person who ridicules the "Birther" theory as inane has no more proof than the born-in-Hawaii skeptic of where Obama was actually born [or didn't have any more proof until over two years into Obama's presidency]: his only argument only argument — beyond the fact that the certificate of live birth and the newspaper clipping are incontrovertible proof that are not, can not be, fakes, bureaucratic mistakes, or misinterpretations — is the indisputable "truth" that Obama is someone whose honesty should not — should never — be questioned. (Whether in regards to his private life or to his political plans for America's future.)
[Update: As it happens, we would learn in 2012 (over four years after Obama was first a candidate and over three years after he entered the White House) that a "New Book Raises Questions About Obama's Memoir" (The New York Times' Michael Shear) and that, indeed, it turns out that Obama's memories were a "fantasy (like most of the President's own memoir)" (The Daily Mail). Adds Toby Harnden: "'Barack Obama: The Story' by David Maraniss catalogues dozens of instances in which Obama deviated significantly from the truth in his book 'Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance'. The 641-page book punctures the carefully-crafted narrative of Obama’s life."]

When you think about it, it might be less worrying that some do not believe Obama was born in the United States (because of the circumstances linked to his entire childhood, much of it abroad) than that some are utterly convinced he must be born in the United States (because the Chicago pol is allegedly a sainted figure who can do, who can say no evil, who is incapable of lying or of falsifying documents). Again, remember the desires of some of his followers who want(ed) the constitution to be changed, only so Obama could win one election after another and end up, in one way or another and in the best of all possible outcomes, as (de facto if not de jure) president-for-life?

Do you believe Barack Obama wants the terrorists to win?

Yes 24
No 43
Not Sure 33

Not just a quarter of Republicans believe this ludicrous premise, but another third think it's a matter open to debate. How do you negotiate with a party whose rank and file are that divorced from reality?

Again, there is a difference between "Do you believe Barack Obama wants the terrorists to win?" and "Do you believe Barack Obama wants the United States to win?" — or, alternatively, asking "Do you believe Barack Obama wants the terrorists to lose?" or "Do you believe Barack Obama wants the United States to lose?" Barack Obama has said several times that in this new, reset world of ours, there should be no losers and winners (or words to that effect), he has pointed out the many times the United States has allegedly been wrong (while making all due apologies), and, especially, he has been (or seemed) more concerned with giving Miranda rights rather than to learn more about the thugs planning (further) terrorist attacks.

Alright, answering Yes to "Do you believe Barack Obama wants the terrorists to win?" may seem far-fetched, but if it seems that he himself, BHO, would answer No to that question (or to "Do you believe Barack Obama wants the United States to lose?"), think of the opposing question — isn't it true that there are indications that BHO would not want to answer Yes to either "Do you believe Barack Obama wants the United States to win?" or "Do you believe Barack Obama wants the terrorists to lose?"

[Update: a couple of days after the ISIS attacks on Paris in November 2015 killed some 130 people, Barack Obama (proudly?) declared that What I’m not interested in doing is posing or pursuing some notion of American leadership or America winning.]

Do you believe ACORN stole the 2008 election?

Yes 21
No 24
Not Sure 55

One in five Republicans think ACORN is so powerful as to magically make 10 million votes appear. Another 55 are open to the theory. In other words, just 24 percent of Republicans have an even passing relationship with reality.

This is called Kos's grotesque caricature weapon. Check the opposite question (asked to either Republicans or Democrats): "Do you believe that ACORN is an entirely honest organization which is deserving of the utmost trust?" Or how about this one: "Do you think ACORN played no tricks during the 2008 elections?" Those options we do not have, nor do we have (in a MCQ format) the option simply to say that ACORN cheated, without perhaps without going so far as having the ability to turn the election one way or the other. Answering No on that question therefore becomes akin to saying ACORN is honest and deserving of trust, and that is not something many people think or want to say… And so Kos feels he is allowed to caricature the results in a ridiculous way ("One in five Republicans think ACORN is so powerful as to magically make 10 million votes appear").

Furthermore, nobody believes ACORN uses (or tries to use) magic (if only!). And, in any case, it's not a matter of either stealing as many as 10 million votes or even of stealing the nationwide election. All you need are (some of) the borderline states. For example, I think a number of people could easily make the case that if not ACORN, then Soros' Secretary of State Project, stole (or was instrumental in stealing) the Minnesota senate election, a theft which required no more than a few hundred fake or dead voter names and which brought enough power to Obama's party for it to act like a one-party state and do what it wanted (at least for a few months)…

Do you believe Sarah Palin is more qualified to be President than Barack Obama?

Yes 53
No 14
Not Sure 33

Sigh...

Guess what, Kos. We also think Scott Brown more qualified to be president of the United States! (Not to mention Mitt Romney, Bobby Jindal, and even… John McCain.) For one thing, Sarah Palin was mayor of a town and governor of a state (which she became in spite of her party machine) for a couple of years; how that makes one many times less (or more) qualified than head of a community organization and in the national senate (with the backing of his party machine), also for a couple of years, is beyond a few of us.

For another, Sarah Palin would likely not have tried to take over General Motors and one sixth of the economy (as Don Surber says, "she would not have wasted $787 billion on a stimulus that tanked the economy"), and she would not even have thought of reading the Christmas Day bomber his Miranda rights and putting the mastermind behind 911 on trial in Manhattan. Well, even if you disagree with any of those, that should make you understand why Palin seems more qualified to be President of the United States than Barack Obama in many of our minds. Note that the "sigh" rests on little else than, again, the uncontested "fact" that the grotesque caricature of Sarah Palin can only be real and that BHO is this holier-than-thou human being whose potential for leadership is self-evident and uncontested.

[Update: After Vladimir Putin annexed the Crimea in 2014, it transpired that one of the many things that Sarah Palin had been ridiculed for during the 2008 campaign was predicting that electing a pacifist like Obama to the White House would only encourage Russia’s Putin to invade Ukraine.]

Do you believe Barack Obama is a racist who hates White people?

Yes 31
No 36
Not Sure 33

I bet more people think Obama is racist, but were too afraid to tell a live operator the truth.

Again, think of the exact opposite of this question — in this case, "Do you believe Barack Obama is an unbiased uniter who loves white people?" — to see how the question is distorted. It is highly unlikely that most people — even Democrats — would answer Yes to the entire revised question. Even Democrats who might — who probably would — gladly say Yes to the first part of the revised question, would have trouble with the second part, sensing it goes too far. (This question is one of several that makes me believe that the questions have been changed since they were asked in order to make Republicans look more "Taliban-like" but, since I have no proof for that, assume that the question was asked as written here.)

There is more than a little evidence to believe that, for reasons good or bad, Obama is — to some extent — resentful of white America, not least his autobiographies, the "damn America" comment of his (former?) spiritual guide, and his "stupid" white policemen quote. Imagine a person being asked the (original) question above; if she answers No, she is effectively answering Yes to the revised question ("do you believe Barack Obama is an unbiased uniter who adores white people?"). If you do not believe the latter, you are in a dilemma in answering the original question and remaining honest.

What all this shows is that if you really want to get to know the population or a segment thereof (rather than make a caricature of them), it makes more sense to frame your queries in multiple-choice question format.

Do you believe your state should secede from the United States?

Yes 23
No 58
Not Sure 19

42 percent of Republicans aren't really patriotic. They pretend to love America only when they approve of the president. These traitors don't believe in democracy, in our nation's founding ideals, or in our flag. To them, those colors run. They are cowards.

What rot! First of all, notice that if anyone is saying anything far-fetched, it is Kos — who is effectively (read his comment again) equating opposition to Obama to being unpatriotic, traitorous, and cowardly. And the way for Kos to frame this is to say that Republicans (pretend to) love America "only when they approve of" who is in the White House, when in fact they are saying — as I have noted in the "socialist" and "impeachment" questions above — that they (might) no longer want to be part of a union if and when the government (never mind if the person in the White House is a Democrat or a Republican) threatens to take too much power…

Let's use our rule again: think of what the opposite question would sound like — "Do you believe your state should remain in the United States?" Your reaction would be, "What is this pollster talking about? Nothing of the sort is going on, why does she bring this up?" You don't have too much time, you have been talking — even if you answered No to all the questions so far — about Obama and socialism and (allegedly) impeachable offenses and presidents who (may) hate you for your race, and now you are asked: "Do you believe your state should secede from the United States?" Obviously, your answer has to do with the loss of liberty from the federal government (real or otherwise) — the feds' treason (so to speak), if anybody's — and not an absence (far from it) of patriotism.

Note, secession sentiment is MUCH stronger in the South than elsewhere -- 33 percent want out, compared to just 52 percent who want to stay. In the Northeast, "just" 10 percent want out, in the Midwest, its 18 percent, and in the West, it's 16 percent. Can we cram them all into the Texas Panhandle, create the state of Dumbfuckistan, and build a wall around them to keep them from coming into America illegally?

Notice how Kos reveals his (Stalinist?) masses-hoarding desires, allegedly uneducated masses for which the gulag-admirer (?) has nothing but contempt. The point with secession, Kos, would be to prevent contemptuous Koses like yourself from carrying out your emprison-'em-all-or-throw-'em-all-out desires.

Should Congress make it easier for workers to form and join labor unions?

Yes 7
No 68
Not Sure 25

No comments here: Notice how Kos refrains from addressing an issue that he knows will hardly prove popular (more power to the unions!). Again, think of what goes unmentioned: imagine if this question had been framed using the controversial card check objective, labor's desire to dump secret ballots, and other bullying tactics — which was/is undoubtedly on most people's minds.

Would you favor or oppose giving illegal immigrants now living in the United States the right to live here legally if they pay a fine and learn English?

Favor 26
Oppose 59
Not Sure 15

Again, Kos refrains from comment. But the reason behind this answer, I surmise, is that once illegal immigrants are in, they've already broken the law — and should not be rewarded from so doing.

Do you support the death penalty?

Yes 91
No 4
Not Sure 5

Again, no comment from Kos.

Should openly gay men and women be allowed to serve in the military?

Yes 26
No 55
Not Sure 19

Should same sex couples be allowed to marry?

Yes 7
No 77
Not Sure 16

Should gay couples receive any state or federal benefits?

Yes 11
No 68
Not Sure 21

Should openly gay men and women be allowed to teach in public schools?

Yes 8
No 73
Not Sure 19

Oof. That's some serious neanderthal action going on. Gays can't serve their country, teach children, get married, or even have civil unions. That's the GOP agenda for gays, which makes the existence of the Log Cabin Republicans that much more of a mystery.

A lot could be said on all of these questions. Note that what to a leftist is simply a "gay man or woman" (like a woman per se or an African-American or an Asian) is to many other people a "gay activist" and yes, it's true that we believe (and we have good reason to) that activism (homosexual or other) gets in the way, among other places, in schools and in the military. Moreover, a number of us believe that activists often mix rights up with privileges.

But to take only the last matter, the question "Should openly gay men and women be allowed to teach in public schools?" sounds innocuous until you realize that, in many minds (and not just in Republicans'), schools are failing, people feel that it is scandalous that there no longer is a concerted effort to teach the 3 R's (readin', writin', and arithmetic), and indeed they have in their stead brought in leftist social goals, not least of which is homosexual proselytizing, as in the mandatory reading of the book Heather Has Two Mommies and as with what has led to the ongoing scandal of Kevin Jennings. It's nor unfair here to say that the question that people heard was, "Should gay activists be allowed to teach in public schools (in which case the follow-up question becomes, to teach the 3 R's or to teach the GLSEN agenda)?"

Now, I will not judge here to what extent it is true that Obama's openly gay Safe School (sic) Czar is a member of NAMBLA and to what extent it is true that he really has held classes in which he has taught schoolkids about fisting — although it seems an undeniable fact that he once failed to protect a 15-year-old from a child predator — all I can say is that parents have a right not to like what they read about Jennings and they have a right to think that all this social activism and all these agendas (whatever the cause, gay or any other, and whether they can be termed extremist or not) are not what schools are about, not primarily and not even secondarily. To quote Matt:

I agree that every child should be valued and respected regardless of sexual orientation and that there should be no bullying in the schools, period. However, I do not feel that the schools should be promoting a gay lifestyle and or any particular lifestyle. They should stick to teaching the fundamentals of Reading, Writing, Math, Science, and History.

Think about it this way: "Should openly Muslim men and women be allowed to teach in public schools?" Most people, Republican or otherwise, would say yes (even on army bases), I believe, as long as we are pretty much sure they do teach reading (and not the Koran), they do teach writing (and not jihad), and they do teach arithmetic (and not about the 72 virgins that believers will get as a reward for killing infidels).

Should sex education be taught in the public schools?

Yes 42
No 51
Not Sure 7

Should public school students be taught that the book of Genesis in the Bible explains how God created the world?

Yes 77
No 15
Not Sure 8

In all of these questions, respondents from the South are slightly crazier, and those from the Northeast slightly less crazier, than the average. In these two questions, the differences are particularly exaggerated. In the South, the sex-ed question comes out 39-56, compared to 47-45 in the Northwest. For the creationism question, it's 82-9 in the South, compared to 70-23 in the Northwest.

"Less crazier"? First, this may come as a surprise to Kos, but humans have mated for tens of thousands of years (unless you accept the version that says humanity is 4,500 years old or so), and have done so without the need of teachers and schools (public or otherwise). This may also come as a(nother) surprise, but — again — some parents simply want the schools to teach, basically, the 3 R's and leave other things best done at home… Whatever you think about creationism and evolution, notice that in the second question, the parents are not asked whether public schools should teach creationism (or even if they should teach creationism alone, i.e., and nothing else) but whether they should teach what the Bible says — not an entirely indifferent matter.

Are marrigiages equal partnerships, or are men the leaders of their households?

Men 13
Equal 76
Not Sure 11

Should women work outside the home?

Yes 86
No 4
Not Sure 10

Should contraceptive use be outlawed?

Yes 31
No 56
Not Sure 13

Do you believe the birth control pill is abortion?

Yes 34
No 48
Not Sure 18

Do you consider abortion to be murder?

Yes 76
No 8
Not Sure 16

Over a third of Republicans believe the birth control pill is abortion, which explains why nearly a third of them want contraceptive use outlawed. This is so wingnutty, it's hardly believable. But it's true, just a bare majority oppose outlawing contraceptives.

Is it truly beyond argumentation to say that abortion is akin to murder? As usual, Kos makes no argument against another position. All he does is say it's wingnutty, it's unbelievable, it's non-progressive, it's reactionary, it's crazy, etc… He states the politically correct position and assumes that all others are nutty, adding — in shock — that the very fact that there are undecided votes is a scandalous travesty.

What we didn't ask was whether the 76 percent who consider abortion to be murder would advocate executions for women who have them. Since 91 percent of respondents support the death penalty.

This, again, is thinking that Republicans — that people in general — are robots (come to think of it, that does seem to be what many élites do happen to think, doesn't it?) who if they think one thing (A) must think another thing (B — but certainly not C) as well. For one thing, all murderers need not automatically be assigned the death penalty — it depends, or it may depend, on the circumstances — and the usual reason for standing for this position, in any case, comes not from a desire to punish a given woman but to prevent society — i.e., its doctors — from offering the procedure, and thus encourage the woman to change her behavior. (Note that I say this not as someone who believes sine qua non that abortion is murder but as someone who believes sine qua non that conservatives, of whatever bent, should not be grotesquely caricatured.)

Do you believe that the only way for an individual to go to heaven is though Jesus Christ, or can one make it to heaven through another faith?

Christ 67
Other 15
Not Sure 18

Two-thirds of Republicans assume anyone that is not a Christian is going to hell. It certainly makes it easier for them to dehumanize their enemies, either real or perceived.

Although that is hardly an unreasonable conclusion to make, notice that hell is not mentioned anywhere in the question, nor is any type of hellish (or devilish) language. Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but offhand, I think it is not unfair to say that Christians do not believe unbelievers should go to hell; they believe they will go to hell, which (they further believe) is nothing if not an unfortunate state of events. Offhand, Christians — certainly not, today's Christians — do not believe that they should help unbelievers go to hell, or act actively (and zealously) to send them there — which (are you listening, Kos?) is all the difference between Christians and conservatives on the one hand, and the Taliban and other members of militant Islam on the other.

And if anyone has been dehumanized, and demonized, these past years, these past decades — as enemies of (progressive) America, as enemies (real, not perceived) of the entire planet — it is America's Republicans and conservatives…