Wednesday, January 3, 2018

"The Weaponization of Tedium Is Putin's New Strategy"

In contrast with the American approach to politics.
Today:
 Chelsea Clinton was accused of being a Satanist

The President's former campaign manager Steve Bannon was reported to have called the  actions of the President’s son “treasonous.”

One of the persons criminally charged by Special Counsel Robert Mueller is suing Special Counsel Robert Mueller
There was a fire at Bill and Hillary Clinton's New York home.

President Trump says his former campaign manager has lost his mind.

Chelsea Clinton denied she is a Satanist, tweeting: "Oh goodness gracious...I'm a Methodist"
But I digress. 
The headline story from BNE Intellinews via the Moscow Times, December 18:
 
His campaign platform will mix populism, paranoia and outright boredom
At the end of every year, Vladimir Putin stages a marathon press conference. Amidst the carefully-contrived zingers, the obsequious softball questions, and the barrage of tedious factoids, what usually emerges is a sense of the man’s current state of mind and his priorities for the future.

With the 2018 presidential election looming, it is clear that his approach will be a little populism, a measure of national paranoia — and a huge admixture of outright boredom. And it is probably the right strategy.

This year’s lasted three hours and 40 minutes, a full hour short of 2008’s record, but in all fairness it felt longer. Much was taken up with questions on such riveting topics as the legality of fitting cows with GPS trackers (Putin thought it ought to be OK) and the price of fish (Putin was on the fishermens’ side).

Even when given the chance to pitch his presidential election platform, Putin managed to be both evasive and general, offering a manifesto of “infrastructure, health, education and technology,” before adding that “this is not the right format to go into detail.” Who, after all, is against infrastructure, health, education and technology?

Asked about the continued absence of Alexei Navalny on the ballot, as ever Putin stepped into Harry Potter territory, treating the opposition leader as he-who-must-not-be-named and comparing him with Mikheil Saakashvili, the chief spoiler in Ukrainian politics.

However, what real passion Putin — who appeared detached, even bored for much of the event – could muster was about US policy and especially the exclusion of Russia from the forthcoming Winter Olympics, which he clearly considers an American plot...MUCH MORE