Putin plays RealPolitik. (I still can't get over Bush's crap about looking into Putin's soul.) Barry's gonna find out right quick that being a smooth talker ain't gonna cut it with Putin. Kennedy found that out with Krushchev right after being elected. Kennedy got run over big time. How could he not? While Kennedy was unarguably a decorated WWII veteran with leadership experience, in his talks he faced off against a man who outlived WWII, Stalin AND Beria, no mean feat for a Russian. It was 16 months later, not immediately as Barry the historically illiterate candidate said on the campaign trail, that Kennedy faced the Missiles of October. The crisis was a direct result of Krushchev measuring up Kennedy in those talks early in his administration and finding him wanting. Whatever you may think of the Bay of Pigs fiasco, Kennedy's blockade of Cuba was the right move, and a tough call. Then their was the waiting over who would blink first (thank god Pelosi wasn't president, or we'd have surrendered a thousand times over). Obama will face the same situation now with Putin, and a more aggressive Russia. How will Obama view the now independent former soviet republics? Are they, as nascent democracies, worth preserving, worth fighting Russia for? We already saw how Obama/Biden were clueless with the whole Georgia invasion. Now the Ukraine seems to be in play.

Unfortunately for those former Soviet Republics, Barry seems a tad preoccupied with getting a stimilus package rushed through. His pick for the CIA, Panetta, has no intelligence experience whatsoever. How will Barry have the necessary intelligence background to handle any talks or, worse, a crisis or crises over Eastern Europe? Putin The Wolf sees in Barry the Sheep a real opportunity. How could a former KGB man not? Will Barry properly view states like the Ukraine, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and the Baltic States as allies? Or will they go under his bus, too? Between the jihadi war and Putin, the economy at home may not be quite so important as he thinks. And China is still the wild card, what with our economic and financial ties with China more abundant than ever. If Obama continues to use retreads from the Clinton/Carter years, things don't look good as we know how bad foreign policy was under Carter and Clinton. And if Barry does a Carter/Clinton, and cuts military spending to pursue his economic stimulus, that only weakens us in any talks with that newly aggressive Russia with its lethal nuclear arsenal. Barry has some tough decisions to make with getting a Cabinet together (and he isn't doing a good job of that right now, as even Clinton would be a cartoon as SoS).

We all know presidents rapidly age in the White House. I predict Barry will be grey in six months, and hunched over after a year. He is going to find out that acting and looking like a president is a far cry from being one. Soon, every decision will be in his pay grade. And based upon what I see, Barry's Peter Principled himself. Which means somewhere in Russia, Putin, all warm and toasty, is salivating at the thought.

More from PUTRID PUTIN the greens are cuasing untold suffering over this global warming poppycock and the euroweenie union

IMHO, Europe deserves the thrashing it is now getting from Russia. After all, the EU made a Devil's bargain by refusing to increase its own energy supplies & production to kowtow to the First Church of Climate Change.

We should be gently reminding our European friends that Russia is helping them reduce their CO2 emissions at a critical time. They should be thanking Russia for reducing gas supplies rather than complaining about it.

And if a few people there die because of this mess? Well, didn't the Global Warming crowd remind us several times over that reducing population was one of the ways we could help reduce our carbon footprint?

/deliciously schadenfreudeian snarking