Tag Archives: Vladimir Putin

September 7, 2012 · 8:12 PM

Russian President Vladimir Putin – Obama is ‘a very honest man’

Missile Defense

This may not sit very well the Romney Team or Romney himself.

Voice 4 America

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin was quoted on Thursday calling President Obama “a very honest man”. President Putin expressed his opinion that a compromise on Europe’s missile defense system would be more probable with Obama in office than with Romney in office.
From The NY Times:

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia sauntered into American presidential politics on Thursday, praising President Obama as “a very honest man” and chastising the Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, for describing Russia as “without question our No. 1 geopolitical foe.”

…

 Mr. Putin said he believed that if Mr. Obama is re-elected in November, a compromise could be reached on the contentious issue of American plans for a missile defense system in Europe, which Russia has strongly opposed.

On the other hand, Mr. Putin said, if Mr. Romney becomes president, Moscow’s fears about the missile system — that it is, despite American assurances, actually directed against Russia — would almost certainly prove true.

“Is it possible to find a solution to the problem, if current President Obama is re-elected for a second term? Theoretically, yes,” Mr. Putin said, according to the official transcript posted on the Kremlin’s Web site. “But this isn’t just about President Obama.

“For all I know, his desire to work out a solution is quite sincere,” Mr. Putin continued. “I met him recently on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Los Cabos, Mexico, where we had a chance to talk. And though we talked mostly about Syria, I could still take stock of my counterpart. My feeling is that he is a very honest man, and that he sincerely wants to make many good changes. But can he do it? Will they let him do it?”

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April 8, 2012 · 1:08 PM

Remembering Mike Wallace 1918-2012

I was a Mike Wallace fan and have missed his unique style of reporting and his bold journeys into territory few other newscasters and journalists would dare venture into.

On March 14, 2006, Wallace announced his retirement from 60 Minutes after 37 years with the program.

CBS

Video compilation of Mr. Wallace’s career…

For half a century, he took on corrupt politicians, scam artists and bureaucratic bumblers. His visits were preceded by the four dreaded words: Mike Wallace is here.

Wallace took to heart the old reporter’s pledge to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. He characterized himself as “nosy and insistent.”

So insistent, there were very few 20th century icons who didn’t submit to a Mike Wallace interview. He lectured Vladimir Putin, the President of Russia, on corruption. He lectured Yassir Arafat on violence.

He asked the Ayatollah Khoumeini if he were crazy.

He traveled with Martin Luther King (whom Wallace called his hero). He grappled with Louis Farrakhan.

And he interviewed Malcolm X shortly before his assassination.

He was no stranger to the White House, interviewing his friends the Reagans . . . John F. Kennedy . . . Lyndon Johnson . . . Jimmy Carter. Even Eleanor Roosevelt.

Plus all those remarkable characters: Leonard Bernstein, Johnny Carson, Luciano Pavarotti, Janis Joplin, Tina Turner, Salvador Dali, Barbra Streisand. His take-no-prisoners style became so famous he even spoofed it with comedian Jack Benny.

It’s hard to believe, but when Wallace was born in 1918 there wasn’t even a radio in most American homes, much less a TV.

As a youth, Wallace said, he was “an overachiever. I worked pretty hard. Played a hell of a fiddle.”

At the University of Michigan, where his parents hoped he’d become a doctor or lawyer, he got hooked instead on radio. And by 1941, Mike was the announcer on “The Green Hornet.”

“My family didn’t know what to make of it – an announcer?” he recalled.

He was soon the hardest-working announcer in broadcasting.

When television arrived in the 1950s, Wallace was everywhere . . . variety shows, game shows, dramas, commercials.

But it was an interview show called “Nightbeat,” first broadcast in 1956, that Wallace remembered fit him like custom-made brass knuckles. “We decided to ask the irreverent question, the abrasive question, the who-gives-a-damn question.”

Some, like labor leader Mike Quill, had never been spoken to that way. “Go ahead and ask your stupid questions,” he retorted.

Neither had mobster Mickey Cohen, whom Wallace asked, “How many men have you killed, Mickey?”

Continue here…

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December 17, 2011 · 8:42 PM

John McCain Finally Figures Out Twitter, Uses It To Insult Foreign Leaders

This is priceless.  Sen. John McCain and Russia’s Vladimir Putin trade barbs…

Democratic Underground

Yet another reason to be grateful President Obama won the election!

“After 10 years as President of Russia, Vladimir Putin stepped aside and became prime minister. But now, he’s running again for his old job, and political barbs are coming his way – some from across the Atlantic.

Sen. John McCain (R, Ariz.) has been needling the Russian leader via Twitter.  And Thursday, Putin struck back.
….

McCain admits he picked a fight with the embattled prime minister.

He tweeted last week, “Dear Vlad, #The ArabSpring is coming to a neighborhood near you.”

McCain admits he giggled when he sent the tweet. “You know,” he says, “you’ve gotta have a sense of humor!”

The former GOP presidential nominee says he expected a reaction, but not the bizarre personal attacks Putin delivered Thursday on Russian TV.

“Mr. McCain was imprisoned in Vietnam,” Putin said. “They put him in a hole for several years. Anyone would go insane.”

Back on Twitter, McCain played it coy, saying, “Dear Vlad, is it something I said?”

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-500202_162-57344125/mccain-putin-trade-barbs/

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August 2, 2011 · 11:48 AM

Think Progress’ Morning Briefing – August 2, 2011

Think Progress

A top union leader is warning that the deal struck to raise the nation’s debt limit with lead to job losses. Gerry McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), called the compromise the House passed yesterday “economic malpractice” that “will slow economic recovery and impose more joblessness, wage cuts and hardship on America’s working families.”

Labor market experts don’t expect the debt deal to jumpstart hiring, fearing instead that trillions of dollars in spending cuts may actually slow economic growth. Said one expert: “I would say this will have little effect if any (on hiring). … At the end of the day, demand trumps all, and right now demand is sluggish.”

In an interview with CBS News last night, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) said he got “98 percent” of what he wanted in the debt deal passed yesterday. “I’m pretty happy,” he said.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said the U.S. is “living like parasites on the global economy” and decried dominance of the dollar in a speech to a pro-Kremlin youth group Monday. Russia holds large amounts of U.S. bonds, and Putin hinted that he had watched debt negotiations closely: “If over there there is a systemic malfunction, this will affect everyone.”

For the second time in a month, a federal judge has temporarily blocked Kansas’s law defunding Planned Parenthood and ordered the state to start distributing funds to the clinic. U.S. District Judge J. Thomas Marten issued the preliminary injunction of the law because its purpose was clearly “to single out, punish and exclude Planned Parenthood.”

The 11-day shutdown of the FAA that has forced safety inspectors to work without pay will likely last through August as the House recessed yesterday for five weeks without reauthorizing the agency. The partial shutdown has furloughed 4,000 workers and will reportedly cost taxpayers $1 billion unless action is taken this week.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces killed more than 100 people across the countrySunday and, according to human rights activists, 24 more on Monday, the first day of Ramadan. President Obama slammed Assad’s use of “torture, corruption and terror” against his own people and said the regime would be “left in the past.”

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen is urging a quick decision from Iraqi leaders about whether they want U.S. troops to stay in the country past Dec. 31. Mullen is alsorequesting immunity for U.S. troops in the country.

As Somalia suffers one of world’s worst famines in recent memory, the Shabab Islamist insurgent group “is blocking starving people from fleeing the country and setting up a cantonment camp where it is imprisoning displaced people who were trying to escape Shabab territory,” the New York Times reports. The group is “widely blamed” for exacerbating the famine by forcing out Western aid organizations.

And finally: Iron-pumper, actor, terminator, governornator, philanderer: Arnold Schwarzenegger has another feather to place in his cap after his hometown of Thal, Austria opened a museum devoted to Schwarzenegger this week. Schwarzenegger was not on hand for the opening, but will make a “future trip for an official ceremony.”

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December 2, 2010 · 9:02 PM

Vladimir Putin To Larry King: I Don’t Want You To Leave CNN (VIDEO)

Has Vladimir Putin looked into Larry King’s eyes and seen his soul?

Huffington Post

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin told a bemused Larry King that he doesn’t want him to leave CNN on Wednesday’s “Larry King Live.”

King interviewed Putin for the entire hour on the show. The two discussed many different issues, but, as the show was wrapping up, Putin brought up one that had gone unmentioned: King’s imminent departure. (King’s last day is Dec. 16th.)

“Can I ask you one question?” he said. “I don’t know why, but the King leaves the scene at the U.S. stage.”

“I sometimes don’t know why myself,” King cut in.

Putin continued:

“At the U.S. stage and the U.S. mass media, there are many talented and interesting people, but still there is just one King there. I don’t ask why he is leaving. But, still, what do you think? When shall we have a right to cry out, long live the King, when there will be another man who is as popular in the whole word as you happen to be?”

 

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November 30, 2010 · 8:11 AM

All the Hottest Diplomatic Gossip From the Latest Wikileak

As many news pundits have pointed out over the last 24 hours, the WikiLeaks dump this past week-end is mainly pure gossip on a geopolitical scale.  Gawker gives us a glimpse…

Gawker

The giant diplomatic cable dump released by Wikileaks today represents the world’s largest leak of geopolitical gossip: Diplomats tittering about world leaders’ sexxxy affairs, their financial skeeziness and weird quirks. Let’s dive into a U.S. Embassy gossip roundup!

  • Libyan President Mumammar al-Qadhafi apparently keeps a “voluptuous blonde” Ukranian nurse named Galyna Kolotnytska at his side at all times. According to one cable: “the Libyan Government sent a private jet to ferry her from Libya to Portugal to meet up with the Leader during his rest-stop. Some embassy contacts have claimed that Qadhafi and the 38 year-old Kolotnytska have a romantic relationship. While he did not comment on such rumors, a Ukrainian political officer recently confirmed that the Ukrainian nurses ‘travel everywhere with the Leader.’” The cable says Kolotnytska is always with Qadhafi because “she alone knows his routine.” Imagining this routine is the mental equivalent of the nuclear bomb Libya was trying to build in the early 2000s. [NYT]

 

  • Qadhafi also uses botox, which is obvious because of how beautifully taut his skin is. [BoingBoing]

 

  • Blind item! Which member of the royal family did something naughty? According to the Guardian, the Wikileaks dump includes “claims of inappropriate behavior by a member of the British royal family.” But they offer no details! We are going to guess Harry, and we are going to guess it was something racist. [Guardian]

 

  • Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime minister Vladimir Putin‘s relationship can be expressed in cartoon terms. Medvedev, “plays Robin to Putin’s Batman.” (Duh: Unlike Putin, Medvedev hasn’t put out massive forest fires using only his two hands.) In other news: U.S. diplomats are huge nerds. [Guardian]

 

  • Speaking of Vladimir Putin, he and staggeringly corrupt Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi are engaged in what BoingBoing appropriately terms a “bromance.” They exchange “lavish gifts” and energy contracts through a “shadowy” middle-man. Aw, so sweet. Now the only things leaking are our eyes. [NYT]

 

  • Idiotic Zimbabwean dictator/president Robert Mugabe is an idiot. So says a former U.S. ambassador to Zimbabwe in a cable! Mugabe sucks as a leader because of “his deep ignorance on economic issues (coupled with the belief that his 18 doctorates give him the authority to suspend the laws of economics, including supply and demand).” Oh, you did not just go there: In Zimbabwe people have been disappeared for insulting just one of Mugabe’s doctorates. [NYT]

 

  • Kim Jong-Il was described by a diplomatic source as a “flabby old chap.” That’s mean. So the guy has curves? We’re so sick of unrealistic body expectations for unhinged dictators. [Guardian]

 

  • The U.S. spied on Ban Ki-moon and other UN leaders. Bet whatever spy was in charge of that snoozer wished they were put on the Qadhafi beat. [Guardian]

 

  • Afghanistan’s Vice President, Ahmed Zia Massoud was discovered to be carrying $52 million in cash in the United Arab Emirates last year. He was allowed to keep the money. Nobody asked him where it came from, which is probably a good thing. [NYT]

 

  • Remember that massive hack attack on Google, which Google blamed on the Chinese government earlier this year? It totally was them! “China’s Politburo directed the intrusion into Google’s computer systems.” They’ve also hacked into U.S. computers and those belonging to the Dalai Lama. That’s right: China may have the Dalai Lama’s cock shots, if he forgot to erase them from his computer. [NYT]

 

  • Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh was “dismissive, bored and impatient,” during a meeting with Obama’s deputy national security adviser, John Brennan. [Guardian]

 

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