_:n975a68bc1dba438ca499d8318c8d630cxb0
<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"If you like your villains textured, Vladimir Putin certainly fits the bill.  Though outwardly rigid, his aspirations for Eastern Hemisphere dominance troubling, he seems to delight in tweaking sacred cows.\nAs easy as it is to despise Vladimir Putin for befriending Bashar Assad, siding with the Ayatollah and annexing Crimea, it is immensely gratifying seeing him sap Obama the darlings of DC.\n\nIn response to Obama’s ban on Russian oligarchs, Putin put forth a ban of his own.  Putin banned the best and brightest from the Gang of Eight:  Senators Harry Reid, John Boehner, Bob Menendez, and John McCain.  Along with the infamous Gang of Eight members, he banned Senators Dan Coats and Mary Landrieu and a handful of White House staffers as well.\n\nPutin most likely banned McCain for it is because of him that he has to contend with Barack Obama.  He banned the others perhaps because they irritate his sensibilities as they do the rest of us.\n\nKnown more for his stoicism than his sense of humor, Putin is running circles around the “not going to Siberia for Spring Break this year” tweets of McCain and Coats with the mastery of his droll deadpan - a mastery of which would make the late Jack Benny envious.\n\nShifts in power take comedic form when the dominant are exposed as the frauds that they are.  Not so comedic is it when the powerful exalt themselves over the powerless; as is the case with Putin and the Ukraine.  But Putin toying with Obama and the Gang of Eight on the other hand is most humorous.  These men who have been made virtually untouchable by media protection and Congressional brotherhood, having their new clothes exposed by a former superpower is highly refreshing.\n\nThough a ban from Russia is the least of what is deserved for Senator Bob Menendez whose sex tourism exploits would land any other American in jail for up to 30 years or for his writing former Fed Chair Ben Bernanke requesting financial favors for his campaign donors; it is a small victory for the Daily Caller and the rest who were categorically dismissed as politically motivated Republican operatives for the attempted outing of the Foreign Relations Committee Chair.\n\nEmerging media have been going about exposing the impenetrable all wrong.  For every call for investigation, a plea for the fifth; for every accusation, a reproach for perpetuating phony scandals and aiding the vast right wing conspiracy; to continue is insanity itself.  Meanwhile Vladimir Putin has been conducting a pedantic class of his own - by making a mockery of the mischievous and a farce out of formidable.\n\nAs frustrating as public apathy and indifference to political corruption, cronyism and copulation is, it is simply a symptom of relativism.  Putin has demonstrated how relief can be found in the form of ridicule.  For the smug have no sense of how extraordinarily susceptible they are to it.  The satirical have yet to sharpen their blades.\n\nSince it is clear that the use of force will not be spent to retaliate against Putin’s prowess, what remains for the mighty mouthpieces?  When they have tried to intimidate Putin with economic sanctions, Russia liquidated billions in Western assets in anticipation of such tomfoolery.\n\nWhen Putin was threatened with UN Security sanctions, he went undeterred; for he holds veto power.  When agitators attempted to pamphleteer the populace; semi-automatic VSK-94s proved to be more persuasive.\n\nPutin has made the best of the short time he has left of Obama’s term to re-conquer former Soviet states; while toying with the self-satisfied in the process.  History shows that totalitarianism will not go unchecked in perpetuity.  In the meantime, it’s a gas watching him expose the perps."
<https://politichicks.com/2014/03/putin-response-obama-ban-g8-unfriending/>