Russia

How does Keith Olbermann view pre-Obama America?  Apparently akin to the Soviet Union, and South Africa under apartheid.  Here was his statement from the top of tonight's DNC coverage.CHRIS MATTHEWS: It is an iconic night in history: we'll all remember this night as long as we live. This is the night that the first Western government, the first Western political power, or party, has nominated an…

A Russian newspaper, Rossiyskaya Gazeta, has an advertising section in today's Washington Post that looks very much like newspaper copy (although it does bear a disclaimer), notes Matt Lewis of Townhall.com. Of course the above-the-fold front page story presents a decidedly pro-Russia skew to the conflict in the breakaway Georgian province of South Ossetia. The headline and subhead: "Georgian…

To these ears, it sounded like a sophomoric line by, well, a sophomore seeking to impress classmates and perhaps his fuzzy-headed teacher.  But MSNBC has proclaimed Mario Cuomo's call for a nuclear freeze because "peace is better than war and life is better than death" one of the greatest convention-speech lines ever.In the run-up to this evening's keynote address by former Virginia Gov. Mark…

The L.A. Times' Rosa Brooks has done it again, taken a serious subject and made an uninformed romp of it. One wonders how the old Georgian lady seen in news photos standing wounded among the ruins of her apartment building, or the Georgian Mother running down the street, infant in her arms, trying to escape Russian tanks might feel about the humor with which Brooks brings to bear upon their…

Not that there was any doubt that McCain walked away the winner from Rick Warren's forum, but when David Shuster cracks that Obama was lucky not too many people were watching . . . Subbing for Chris Matthews on this evening's Hardball, Shuster kibitzed Saddleback with Dem Steve McMahon and Republican Todd Harris. Shuster made his surprising remark at segment end.DAVID SHUSTER: I think it also…

CNN correspondent Tom Foreman omitted identifying a "foreign policy expert" as a former member of Bill Clinton’s National Security Council during a report on John McCain’s strong position towards Russia on Wednesday’s Election Center program. This expert, Charles Kupchan of the Council of Foreign Relations, accused McCain of becoming a belligerent position towards the country: "Well, over the…

The crisis in Georgia is all Bush's fault, the Republicans offered America a soft-pedaled version of George Wallace's racism, and Obama-voting Southern Democrats are intelligent, defiant people living in occupied territory. I learned all that from just one Newsweek column.I may have to watch "The View" to earn back some I.Q. points.Yes, Christopher Dickey enlightened Newsweek readers on "The…

This is so typical. John McCain's chief foreign policy adviser and his business partner lobbied the senator or his staff on 49 occasions in a 3 1/2-year span while being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by the government of the former Soviet republic of Georgia. Yes, it is the same talking point Obama and the Russians have been using all week. This time they kicked it up a notch with a…

At the top of the first hour of Tuesday's The Situation Room on CNN, fill-in anchor Suzanne Malveaux led with Russia's invasion of Georgia and she cited how “Moscow responded with a show of military muscle that was reminiscent of the Cold War era.” But 40 minutes later, CNN political analyst Bill Schneider contended that raising the very “Cold War” specter CNN had reported could “frighten” voters…

Note to the Financial Times: When one nation sends tanks and troops across the border into another sovereign nation, that's an invasion, not an "invasion," even when you're quoting President Bush. An acute case of Bush Derangement Syndrome needn't cloud editorial judgment. Yet that's precisely what the FT did in the August 12 paper as headline writers chose to dismissively place the word "…

Despite penning 38 paragraphs for his obituary, the closest AP's Douglas Birch came to mentioning the late Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Christian faith was by remarking how the bearded author and Soviet dissident looked like a religious icon:In a 1978 speech at Harvard University, Solzhenitsyn - who with his beard and dour demeanor resembled a figure from an Orthodox icon - denounced the Western view…

During Tuesday night’s presidential debate, NBC’s Tim Russert tried to test the Democratic candidates’ basic knowledge of foreign policy, asking what they knew about the man who will almost certainly be elected president of Russia in Sunday’s elections. After Hillary Clinton gave a general answer that kept referring to “Putin’s handpicked successor,” Russert pounced: “Do you know his name?”But if…