Long-time friends ask me why I became so indulgent to Boris Yeltsin and now to Gospodin Putin -- even to the point of forgiving the latter's past as a full Colonel in the KGB. My answer? Mother Russia was possessed of a devil from 1917 to 1991. Now it is necessary for her to recover from the ordeal of possession. Though I might be proved wrong before I die, I believe at this writing that "Tsar Vladimir" is not the rabid dog that the Soviet leaders were.

That paragraph is frightening. Maybe Russia should just join the EU and we can get this whole on-world government-thing moving more quickly.

"Like the proverbial canary in the coal mine, the now-infamous confrontation between Hitchens and Father Rutler at Manhattan’s Union League Club on May 1 portends worse things ahead. It reveals a deadly weakness in the conservative movement. It shows how carelessly and reflexively we have fallen into the habit of treating our enemies as friends, and our friends as enemies. Many of us, it appears, have lost the ability to tell the difference. This is no trival flaw. Unless corrected, it spells doom for our movement, and perhaps ultimately for our Republic."

http://www.takimag.com/

Lavrov and Putin this country boy from the hills of north Louisiana ain't, but I'll put your hospitality to the test the next time I venture to the North Shore of Chicago. However, finding your undisclosed location may be a challenge.

Now, my table is also good and witty, warm, friendly, amusing and decent people are often to be found there; however, there is no cellar here because the water is only about two feet under the ground. Were it here, it would not be well stocked, save for iced-tea and butter milk!

It is always pleasant of course to see sanity ‘reimposing’ itself…

Here is the maxim under one pseudonym or another I have always reminded us of: ‘Absolute or perfect balance in the world is rigged to be not possible (the world is alive and dynamic, not hypothetical); and for this very reason on the other hand approximate balance is Requisite.’

Children or more specifically ‘adolescents’ “think” or more accurately in this regard ‘believe’ in terms of absolutes … they take a non-dynamic [or absolute] wish or fantasy and ‘believe’ in it ‘as if’ they are actually ‘thinking’. There's is nothing wrong with ‘belief’ indeed it is in human or conceptual creatures a BIOLOGICAL necessity. We do it and will always do it all the time. The mistake is to confuse it with thought. A belief [wish or idea] is open-ended, and good in that regard. Apparently even mother Nature has proven to be paradoxically in some NARROW regards open ended in allowing for creatures (ourselves) who are not only aware and thinking unconsciously…but aware of being aware and also thinking consciously as well. A thought in comparison with beliefs or a wish or an idea is not open ended. Rather it is something complete in itself and something we can Do. Here’s a thought - ‘don’t confuse motion with action.’

‘In 2003 and 2004 came the U.S.-supported and financed “color-coded revolutions” in Georgia and Ukraine, the geopolitical equivalent of Putin engineering anti-American regime changes in Mexico and Canada.’ -Trifkovic

The ‘belief’ in American right to hegemony or the cultural underpinning of a jewish notion in their being ‘chosen’ … is adolescence. Putin argued in the past let’s give them the benefit of the doubt. Now he is acting, based on our adolescent belief that an untenable IMBALANCE toward ourselves in the world is a good thing, by his instead having to become the sane responsible parent…in noticing Approximate Balance is Requisite.

I have also written in the past of noticing his courage and sanity, and am glad to see it continues to be the case. Of course perfect or absolute balance is NOT possible…only the temptation to act in one’s own interests in tipping the balance/s…too much toward oneself. We can Hope once it is Russia’s or china’s turn to make that mistake they do Not choose to. Or if they do then perhaps in the future America may have its own Putin. That would be ‘nice.’
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