Vladimir Putin

After 56 years in broadcasting and more than 50,000 interviews across the U.S., anyone else would be considered a prime candidate for retirement, but that doesn't apply to Larry King, who will launch a “mold-breaking political talk show” in June for the Russia Today online TV network.

Perhaps failed CNN-FOX-MSNBC-Current anchor Keith Olbermann should pay attention. If no one in America will hire you, take your act international.

Liberal MSNBC anchor Martin Bashir on Monday compared Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry to former KGB agent Vladimir Putin, citing the fact that both supposedly love guns and "shoot to kill."

After playing a clip of Perry expressing his appreciation for the American tradition of firearms ownership, Bashir bizarrely proclaimed that "Mr. Perry's wild west show calls to mind another world leader. Yes, Vladimir Putin." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

It appears that at NPR, even a fat lip for the President is to be heralded as a crowning achievement furthering his prestige and street cred when dealing with despots like Kim Jong Il and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

According to Scott Simon, a president with a "gnarly, vivid scar" might even be able to intimidate China's rulers into halting their currency manipulation (audio follows with partial transcript and commentary):

Ouch!

This video of Russian ex-President (now Prime Minister) Vladimir Putin's response to a question about terrorism at a G-8 summit press conference was posted in early 2008. However, his answer is worth noting now in light of  Barack Obama's rather dispassionate first response to the Nigerian Christmas Day bomb plot terrorist which came off as sounding like a tepid legalistic statement from a deputy district attorney. Here is a transcipt of the question from a French journalist and the blunt response from Putin which stunned  the press conference to silence:

FRENCH JOURNALIST:  ...Don't you think that by trying to eradicate terrorism in Chechnya you are going to eradicate the civilian population of Chechnya?

VLADIMIR PUTIN: If you want to become an Islamic fundamentalist and be circumcised, come to Moscow. We are multiconfessional. We have very good specialists. I can recommend one for the operation. He'll make sure nothing grows back.

TASS probably couldn't have done it better. And NBC correspondent Jim Maceda seemed to be channeling that Soviet Russia official state-run news agency in his glowing account of Russia Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's heavy-handed dealings with some small businesses. Putin was, he said, "combating Russia's deep recession hand-to-hand."

Maceda, in a July 6 "Nightly News" segment, spoke admiringly of Putin's evolution from bureaucrat to Russian president, and now Renaissance man.

"Over the past decade, Vladimir Putin's morphed into more roles than a Hollywood star," Maceda said. "From Boris Yeltsin's shy obedient yes-man to the imperious leader, the action man, bomber pilot, artist and lately the people's prime minister combating Russia's deep recession hand-to-hand - harassing a supermarket manager for marking up pork prices."

Here’s a quick informal poll:  Who has heard news of Russia’s recent troop buildup in the South Ossetia region of Georgia?

Most of our readers would immediately think of the Russian invasion of that region last summer, during the presidential contest, but the Russians are arguably saber rattling again with a fresh buildup of boots on-the-ground ahead of planned NATO exercises.

Last August, the media coverage immediately took the angle of breathless anticipation on how each presidential candidate would react to such a situation.  John McCain’s position was easily established from his record over many years in the Senate.  Then-Senator Obama’s position was much more difficult to ascertain – but the media gave him ample time to figure it out, helping the candidate defer those questions to the September 26 debate.  In fact, a good example of such activism was shown in the Washington Post’s Jim Hoagland, who in his August 31 op-ed insisted:

It's not often that meteorology intersects with geopolitics - but Europe could be in store for another Cold War, literally.

Accuweather.com's chief long-range and hurricane forecaster Joe Bastardi observed that Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's recent cut of gas flows to Europe via Ukraine may have been done so in anticipation of a global cooling cycle on the Jan. 6 "Glenn Beck Show" radio program. Bastardi has a solid reputation among Wall Street traders for understanding weather's impact on energy commodities.

"The thing I want to bring up here - very interesting - most of the solar cycle studies that we know about and that guys like me read have come out of the Russian scientists," Bastardi said. "But when Glasnost developed, the Russian scientists, a lot of their ideas on the coming cool period that a lot of us believe is going to occur - ice, rather than fire is the big problem down the road here 2030, 2040, and the reversing cyclical cycles of the ocean - it came out of the East."

On Sunday’s This Week on ABC, host George Stephanopoulos seemed to buy into the idea that Georgia provoked war with Russia as he asked guest Mitt Romney, "Didn’t President Saakashvili of Georgia bring some of this on himself by going into South Ossetia?" After Romney informed viewers that Georgian troops were deployed in response to violent attacks by South Ossetians, the ABC host followed up by asking Romney to respond to charges that the push, presumably by the United States, to expand NATO and build a missile defense system was perceived by Vladimir Putin as "belligerent and aggressive." Stephanopoulos: "How do you respond to the argument that by pushing for Georgia to be in NATO, by pushing for Ukraine to be in NATO, by putting a missile defense system in Czechoslovakia, this was seen as belligerent and aggressive by Putin and kind of brought him in?"

The Democrats and the mainstream media have long been pushing the meme that George W. Bush is a 'unilateral cowboy' who alienates our supposed allies. Funny thing about that, in the past six years, the governments who actively oppose American goals and who expressed their disdain for the current President have one by one been pushed out of office and replaced by governments who are much closer to the Bush Administration. This has happened so far in Germany (Angela Merkel), France (Nicolas Sarkozy), Canada (Stephen Harper) and now in one of Russia's closest allies, the Republic of Serbia.

As reported by the Washington Post, Serbia's pro-Western president declared victory in Sunday's parliamentary elections _ a stunning upset over ultranationalists who tried to exploit anger over Kosovo's independence. But his rivals vowed to fight on, and it was unclear if he could stave off their challenge. "This is a great day for Serbia," Boris Tadic proclaimed after an independent monitoring group that carried out a parallel vote count nationwide said his bloc won 39 percent _ about 10 percent more than the ultranationalist Serbian Radical Party. Of course the Post managed to miss the fact that this is one more supposed ally of Russia's neo-Communist and imperialist president Vladimir Putin that has instead chosen closer ties with the free states of Europe and the United States. Michelle Malkin pointed out the fact that the Post managed to completely miss, writing:

I'll be live-blogging the press conference (mostly just the questions from the journalists as we're focused on the bias) and if a video update is warranted, we'll post one shortly after the conference concludes:

10:44 closes press conference, leaves podium.

10:41: Mark Silva, Chicago Tribune, says reading Bush's body language he can tell he's "somewhat dispirited." Then he says "the facts have failed you" on things he's telling the American people. Quotes Harry Reid. "Are you feeling troubled... credibility gap?"

10:37: unid'd reporter "Wolf" asks about if Bush's personal relationship with the Democrats in Congress is affecting getting legislation through.

10:35: another unid'd reporter named "Wolf" asks Bush to react to 2008 U.S. presidential race

10:35: reporter asks if he discussed Russian elections with Putin

10:33: unidentified reporter asks Bush if in his conversation with Putin if he asked him to not sell uranium to Iran.

10:30: Baier, Fox News: "What does the vote in Venezuela mean for the U.S.? .... What's your reaction to Chavez opponents winning?"

Here's a side of global warming the shills at Newsweek and alarmists such as Al Gore don't want to address: there are actually countries and peoples on the planet who would welcome a less frigid climate.

Take for example Russia, where a little warming would help such industries as agriculture, oil drilling, and tourism, while obviously cutting down on the number of cold-related deaths each winter.

As reported by Cox News Service Sunday (emphasis added throughout):