A long wonderful comparison between the two -- from Daniel Greenfield at the Canada Free Press:
All the PravdaA wonderful read. Daniel closes with the following:
For a man so in love with the technology of image, the camera, the microphone and the teleprompter, the leader of the increasingly less free world has a natural tendency to put a little too much faith in it. This is the second time that an open microphone has let Obama down, the first time it recorded him stabbing an ally in the back, the second time it recorded him stabbing a few dozen more in the back.
Medvedev, whose bosom buddy just managed to cling to power with a stolen election and brutal suppression of protests, surely understands how O feels. Photo ops with tigers and sunken treasures, not to mention skiing, martial arts, and even rap, did not keep the Big P in smooth with the Russian public when the economy headed south.
Vladimir Putin didn�t have any racial guilt to ladle on the voters that might get them to overlook the mansions, the corruption and the abuses of power. But the average American voter, like the Russian voter, is more interested in the meat and potatoes, not to mention the gasoline, than in mystical allusions to the power of history. If Putin at times seemed bent on passing himself off as a new czar and Obama as a new savior, the crown and halo were shattered by the economy.
Putin�s had tightened control over Russia to an extent that the Obamas and the Warrens could only fondly dream of in their fondest federalist fantasies. And it�s easier to steal elections when you don�t have to kowtow to a bunch of provincial interests and take the complaints of bible and gun owners seriously. But much like Putin and Ahmadinejad, Obama enjoys dim prospects in a straight election. And unlike them, he doesn�t have a military force that will turn up a few million ballots and send the protesters straight to the hospital, if not to the morgue.
It�s the Chicago way. You scratch my back and I won�t look too closely into those shady land deals or the suspicious deaths. Ever since the Caliph of Chicago made it to the White House, the old game has gone from the backlots of Oz park to the world stage, but it hasn�t really changed much, just gotten bigger. Moscow, which is the Chicago of Russia, where payoffs and legbreaking are the only form of law that matters, understands how to play the game. They also know a punk when they see one.Hat tip to The Blogmocracy for the link.
It�s a sad testament to the Republic that these days our political system has converged with the Russian one. Some twenty years after the Soviet Union fell, the American and Russian leaders have a good deal in common. They both oversee mafia states that spend money wildly for their 1 percent who are in power or close to those who are, while playing class warfare games with business titans when they aren�t hitting them up for cash.
Propaganda is the only thing on television. Enemies of the state are forever being denounced in the most vulgar and violent language. Nationalization and federalization are passed off as reform programs, when they are actually payday programs to shove as much money and power to the right people as possible. And the goal of those in power appears to be a perpetual one party state run for their own benefit.
Obama and Putin are both petty tyrants living in a house of mirrors, czars of their own egos, corrupt and corrupting forces that hang around the necks of two great nations. They don�t quite understand each other, though both are lawyers and bag men for their respective syndicates, neither do they respect each other. But they both know how to play the game.
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