I think the election process makes it difficult to get real leaders. Rather, we get actors playing the role of statesmen. The net result is no solutions, just publicity stunts and name calling to distract from incompetence. As an analogy, say the rules of the election process were based on a mixed martial arts tournament. This would eliminate all the smart knurds, at the beginning, since they can't compete this way. The leader would be the best at this election process, but with no guarantee he would have the skills needed to lead the country. The current election process does not benefit honest people, but works better with lies and spin, and is therefore is better for the con artists and actors. It is media driven and need constant soap opera to sell soap. Abraham Lincoln could not win the current process, even though history proves his worth. The process would degenerate his messages by favoring lies for drama. The deadlock in Washington is portrayed as due to strong partisanship of leadership, but it is really due to mutual incompetence; waste and deficits due to lack of talent. They are experts when it comes to winning the process not leading the country.
No Republican is "getting together" or allying themselves with any non-Republican. The anti-war left, to the extent that any such thing can be identified in the US Congress these days (left is hard to find), is tending to vote yes as much as no - people such as Keith Ellison, say. The best entertainment value is from watching the Republicans try to come to their automatic solidarity on an issue with no clear effect on rich people's taxes. There is no "each side". One faction is trying to do that to everybody else, and trying to sell us on the notion of "both sides" in every issue. So we see the illustration of unusual politics and broken stereotypes is Kucinich arguing against US military intervention in Asian wars.
Putin Persists: More Popular Than Congress The American Republican Dream Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Couldn't see this one coming, right? Via Steve Benen: It wasn’t too long ago that Russia was fairly popular in the minds in the American mainstream. The latest poll from CNN suggests that’s changed rather dramatically. Most Americans say Russia is directly or indirectly responsible for the downing of a Malaysia Airlines jetliner over eastern Ukraine, and unfavorable opinions of Russia have surged, according to a new national poll. […] According to the poll, just 19% of Americans have a favorable opinion of Russia, down from 41% in February. Fifty-seven percent of the public saw Russia in a positive way in a 2011 CNN/ORC survey. Seventy-eight percent of those questioned say they have an unfavorable opinion of Russia, a surge of 23 percentage points since February. That’s almost impressive, in a way. It takes real effort to go from 41% to 19% favorability in the course of five months. But what stands out for me is a CNN poll from a few weeks ago that said Congress has a 14% approval rating. Let’s pause to appreciate what this is telling us. Most Americans believe that Russia will try to cover up its possible involvement in the death of 298 people. Indeed, according to this poll, roughly 85% of Americans believe Russia was directly or indirectly responsible for shooting down a civilian airliner over Ukraine. And despite this recent bloodshed, still very much on the minds of millions, Russia is still a few points more popular than Congress. And while we might note that there is, technically, a difference between favorability and approval ratings, this is probably the best comparison we'll get. I would suggest that everyone say, "Thank you, Speaker Boehner!" except, well, it doesn't really matter what Congress is doing; Americans treat their government like a biblical scapegoat. Still, though, the intransigence and childishness and outright lying we've come to expect of Republicans really don't help. ____________________ Notes: Benen, Steve. "Russia’s U.S. standing plummets, still more popular than Congress". msnbc. July 21, 2014. msnbc.com. July 21, 2014. http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/russias-us-standing-plummets-still-more-popular-congress Image credit: Detail of photograph by Mikhail Klimyentev for AFP/Getty, July 18, 2014.
Vladimir Putin, Greek Style Russian fanboys give great headline for Puti-Toots' birthday Oh, come on. How many times are you going to get to write a headline like that? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Canada? Really? Hercules was afraid of Canada? So here is the brief explanation, via Katie Zavadski for New York Magazine: For his birthday, President Obama only got a photo essay of the past year's events posted to the White House website. Russian president Vladimir Putin, on the other hand, got a whole exhibition comparing him to the Greek mythical hero Heracles (known further west as Hercules). No joke — it's called "The 12 Labors of Putin." The exhibit was held on Monday by members of a pro-Putin Facebook group in Moscow's "Red October" showspace, formerly the site of a chocolate factory by the same name. Putin turns 62 on Tuesday. "Interestingly, the events of the ancient legends about the mythological hero Hercules can be relayed onto our days, when the three-headed dog Cerberus reminds us of the USA, annihilation of the Stymphalian Birds — of stopping the air raids in Syria and the cleaning of the Augean stables is fighting corruption," the organizers wrote on Facebook, apparently in earnest. Meanwhile, the result is in part what we see: The world's foremost closet homosexual, adoringly depicted in Greek style. If nothing else, the psychopathology of Puti-Toots the Hidden makes for fascinating comedy of the darkest degree. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Mikhail Antonov: The "curator" of the Russian fanboy exhibit. I keep wanting to make a gay joke about the "curator of the Exploits of Putin" ("куратор выставки о подвигах Путина"), but in truth it is difficult to get past Antic Hay, the 1923 novel by Aldous Huxley, in which the men frequently complimented one another for having fine "beavers"°. And in truth, that's no beaver; it looks more like a dead nutria. ____________________ Notes: ° Yes, at one point "beaver" referred to a man's facial beard, not a woman's (ahem!) "downstairs beard". Works Cited: Zavadski, Katie. "Putin's Birthday Present Is a Hercules-Themed Art Show About How Manly and Amazing He Is". Daily Intelligencer. October 6, 2014. NYMag.com. October 7, 2014. http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/10/putin-birthday-present-hercules-art-show.html
You people can thrash around as crazily as you like. But the liklihood remains that launching a full-scale air war against Assad a year ago would only have hastened the rise of ISIS, the Nusra Front and other equally distasteful Islamist groups. Assad's army remains the only local force on the 'Islamic State's' western flank with the capacity to resist them right now. Common sense suggests that concentrating our energies on weakening his military would only create a power-vacuum that almost certainly wouldn't be filled by wonderful freedom-loving progressives (who seem to be in very short supply in that part of the world at the moment). So Putin's argument a year ago seems to me to have had quite a bit of merit. It still does. The fact that the US is currently resisting Ankara's insistence that it redirect its anti-ISIS efforts towards an anti-Assad campaign suggests that Washington may be coming around towards that view as well.
Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! http://reason.com/blog/2014/11/03/putin-spanks-obama-in-new-russian-propag
