[darkwing104]

[blackdog]

And that’s an insult to weak sisters everywhere.

[varmintman]

http://www.realhistorychannel.org/the-talented-mr-putin

[null and void]

[equaviator]

He was so cool...what happened?

[Fantasywriter]

I was just thinking this exact thing—how weak Putin makes Obama look. Can anyone imagine Putin saying, ‘I have a pen and a phone?’ Putin probably laughed so hard when Obama said that, he nearly choked. Yet Obama’s advisors actually thought it sounded good. It was supposed to be a comeback line. Instead, it just sounds like something a middle schooler would say. (Though unfortunately he really does give that pen a good workout. & rarely does congress call him on it.)

[cripplecreek]

I don’t know if its even possible but we need to be able to censure the Obama administration and send real diplomats who aren’t afraid to face Putin.

Diplomats who who won’t talk tough from our position of weakness but will talk smart. They’ll need to apply the same diplomacy to the Ukrainians as well.

[St_Thomas_Aquinas]

They're on the same team.

What does, "I can be more flexible after the election," mean to these people?

[JimSEA]

While it’s obvious that Putin is a strong leader with public support while Obama is self centered, weak and even subversive to traditional American values, it doesn’t follow that Putin is a good guy. Putin is a fascist dictator bent on rebuilding the territory of the USSR. Freedom isn’t in his vocabulary. All this hero worship is nauseating.

[elhombrelibre]

Funny stuff. Like Hitler not believing that Germany lost WWI (they were stabbed in the back), Putin doesn't accept that Russian/Soviet Communism lost the Cold War. Their empire and their death camps were undermined by nefarious means. The collapse of communism was, in his words, "The breakup of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century." And like the German's who wouldn't accept that they'd lost, there were then people abroad who felt sorry for the defeated (John Maynard Keynes, anyone?), and harshly punished Germans. But the Russian/Soviets for all the harm they'd done the world were never made to pay for their sins. They were welcomed into the fellowship of man and encouraged to have influence except where it involved their more wacky paranoid fantasies about being surrounded.

But as for Putin, and, granted, as a second generation member of the secret Soviet police responsible for oppressing the Russian people and other captive nations to the communists, the collapse of Russian/Soviet communism probably was an awful thing. For the millions who'd lost loved ones in the GULAG, where tens of millions died, or those who would not be going there for all the myriad of irrational reasons, Putin's pining for the police state and its prisons must have seemed callous (not to some FReepers, though, it seems, as I've never had a single one of the FReeper Putinista army suggest that the collapse of the Soviet Union wasn't as Putin saw it).

But let's not waste this Holy Saturday feeling sorry for Putin. He cashed in, as the great opportunist that he is. He found a new gig. Now, he's the Milosovic of Russia, the $75 billion dollar man, possibly the richest man in the world. And, as he tells it a devout Christian.

[Hogblog]

Putin knows that the Pu$$y in Chief is only concerned with destroying the USA.... Vlad concurs with King Zero’s approach......

[Hoodat]

I disagree with the premise in the title. Obama needs no help from Putin in looking weak. He is doing a fine job of that all on his own.