Russia skewers US election as undemocratic, ‘the worst in the world’

Russia skewers US election as undemocratic, ‘the worst in the world’
By Julian Pecquet - 11/04/12 06:00 AM ET

The Russian government is lambasting the U.S. presidential race as an undemocratic spectacle amid growing concerns about the country’s own commitment to free and fair elections.

The Foreign Ministry this week accused America of hypocrisy following reports that some U.S. states would turn away international election monitors at the polls.

The Kremlin-funded Russia Today television station, meanwhile, is serving up a steady stream of outraged U.S. election coverage, reporting on topics such as the lack of polling places in Indian country and the short-shift given to third-party candidates by the American media.

The U.S. electoral system, Russian elections chief Vladimir Churov declared this week, “is the worst in the world.”

Observers say the attacks against America's election system are largely fueled by domestic politics in Russia.

Voting has become a touchy subject for the Kremlin following the massive demonstrations that pro-democracy activists staged against the legislative elections that were held in December. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the turmoil raised “serious concern.”

Further, observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) said President Vladimir Putin's election to a third six-year term in March was marred by “serious problems.”

The U.S-Russia relationship “has become a part of the chess game of domestic Russian politics,” said Matthew Rojansky, the deputy director of the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“It's not surprising that attacking the United States — and trying to diminish the credibility of what is said by Americans and what comes from Washington — is very much now in the interest of the Russian authorities,” Rojansky said.

"It says something about the state of the relationship. There's not a lot of trust right now. We're defaulting to a lot of bad old habits, this kind of tit-for-tat criticism, which was common during the Cold War."

Members of Putin’s government have paid particular attention to the move by Texas and Iowa to reject election monitoring by the OSCE, a 56-member group that the United States has relied on to criticize flawed elections in other countries, including Russia.

This year's Republican-led backlash against the OSCE — a group that has monitored six U.S. elections since 2002 without incident — was quickly seized upon by Russian officials such as Churov, who is widely known in the country as the “magician” for his role in helping Putin and his United Russia party stay in power.

“It is strange why the U.S. authorities, who often accuse other countries of being not democratic enough, prefer not to notice such violation of democracy in their own country,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement Wednesday.

Still, Rojansky said, much of the criticism appears to be aimed at silencing critics at home and abroad. Russia has taken steps to silence independent election monitors, which get funding from the United States and other foreign sources.

The attacks are part of a broader backlash against the United States in Russia, according to Rojansky. The Kremlin threw out the U.S. Agency for International Development this fall and announced last month that it was ending the 20-year U.S.-Russia partnership to contain loose nukes.

“It's worse this year because the relationship has become much more overtly political,” he said.

“It's sort of an across-the-board, you America are unwilling to acknowledge the reality that Russia today is different than Russia in 1993 when you first negotiated all these agreements, and basically it is a political thing and it is a power thing: We're back on our feet, and you cannot run these things in the sort of heavy-handed way that you did right after the end of the Cold War.”

Putin and Obummer, those enemies of freedom, agree that Texas is a terrible place. And we take that as a platinum-plated compliment.

Absolutely. Anytime some "stick-their-nose-in-your-business" know it all busybody communist agenda "progressive" starts in on Texas I like to send them this one...

You'r right, Texas is awful. Too hot in the summer, day after day of 100+ and you will freeze during the winter cold fronts. It is so cold it knocks out the power plants that provide the heating.

In the early part of dang near ever summer we get these huge thunderstorms that have so much lightening it is like artillery barrages and dump hailstone the size of tennis balls. My truck just got busted up by the latest one here in Dallas back in June. The damage was so widespread it took two and a half weeks just to get to an estimator. I didn't get into a body shop till October. They were all full.

We got killer bees, anthrax in everything from the vegetable gardens to the deer, tornadoes, floods and gigantic wildfires that burn down entire counties,

There are so many rattlesnakes that Texas doesn't require a hunting license to just kill`em and I think it is only ten bucks for the massive rattlesnake hunts they have every year. It is still ok to stomp them to death when they come up in your front yard.

The ones going to those snake hunts are something else. Here in Texas it is classified as "recreation." No joke. No traps allowed, gotta use your hands and a stick.

Also there are coral snakes and 10 kinds of pit vipers, including the copperhead, cottonmouth plus eight rattlesnake species. Piranha in some lakes too. There are World record alligators in the rivers as well. It makes for some interesting fishing trips.

Then there are the feral hogs all over the place. No season. No limit. Standard hunting license and you are good to go after the 300 pounders. Just watch out for the packs of coyotes that run wild day and night.

Mountain lions are pretty much everywhere, including the suburbs here in Dallas. They had to shoot one in downtown El Paso last year. About five years ago one was spotted in a downtown Dallas parking garage! Damn things will hop your backyard fence and chow down on your dogs in a blink of an eye.

Then there are the Texans themselves. Wow! The only folks I know that call their AR-15's "pellet guns." Dallas county has so many people doing concealed carry I don't even have to anymore. Darned if they are not just everywhere. And some are toting iron that makes a .45 look like a 22.

Everywhere you go the people are almost all Republicans or conservatives OR TEA Party! They actually believe that smaller and smaller government is a good thing. It is difficult to find any correctly educated and enlightened people to talk about global warming, renewable green energy or diversity/inclusiveness!

Any if you want to relax for a year or two and write a book or whatever, forget it! You can’t say on unemployment for as long as you like because jobs are everywhere. Those drilling and pipeline companies working the shale (dirty) oil boom going on in central Texas is hiring everybody in sight.

Not only all that, they actually allow the operation of huge refineries all over the State and offshore drilling and oil production too! Because the refineries are right there you can't find gasoline properly priced above $4.00 a gallon ANYWHERE.

They are so backwards they have not even passed a State income tax and do not require union labor!

Yea, those correctly educated and enlightened people would not like it here. They should not even think about showing up in Texas, it's just awful.

:-)

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