The World Is Taking Crazy Pills (Super Redux)

I don't know why...

Someone shut this man up and put every news agency that gives him the adulation he never deserved to begin with out of business:

President Barack Obama on Friday denied he has poor relations with Vladimir Putin after canceling their Moscow talks, but said the Russian president can sometimes appear "like a bored kid in the back of the classroom."

U.S.-Russian relations plunged to one of their lowest points since the Cold War this week after Russia granted temporary asylum to fugitive former U.S. spy contractor Edward Snowden. Obama retaliated by abruptly canceling a Moscow summit with Putin planned for early next month. ...

"I know the press likes to focus on body language, and he's got that kind of slouch, looking like the bored kid in the back of the classroom. But the truth is that when we're in conversations together, oftentimes it's very productive," Obama said.

Putin's sending of a telegram wishing former President George W. Bush well after a heart procedure this week was viewed by some Kremlin watchers as a sign that Putin was sending an implicit message to Obama.

The White House says Obama pulled out of the Moscow summit not just because of the Russian decision to grant asylum to Snowden, who is wanted in the United States to face espionage charges. U.S. differences with Russia have piled up recently over Moscow's support for the Syrian government in that country's civil war, as well as human rights concerns and other grievances.

Obama did resolve one issue that has been debated in the United States. He said American athletes will in fact compete in the Sochi Winter Olympics in 2014, in spite of Russia's anti-gay propaganda law.

"I do not think it's appropriate to boycott the Olympics," Obama said.

He said the best way to combat the law is for gay and lesbian athletes to do well in the Sochi Games.

"One of the things I'm really looking forward to is maybe some guy and lesbian athletes bringing home the gold or silver or bronze, which would I think go a long way in rejecting the kind of attitudes that we're seeing there," he said. "And if Russia doesn't have gay or lesbian athletes, then, it'll probably make their team weaker."

(Sidebar: groan. Sure it will. Did Obama forget that homosexual athletes weren't banned from the games?)

The Kool-Aid drinkers of the popular press must surely see how pathetic they are to prop up a man (a word I use loosely to describe Obama) who thinks he has everyone from Prime Minister Stephen Harper to President Vladimir Putin on the ropes.  He is also the same man who can appear on late-night talk shows ad nauseum, sing songs that make sense only to thirteen year old girls and whines that his handlers make him work for re-election.

Pathetic.

 

Related: if I'm going to spend $38,000 on a handbag, it had better double as an emergency life raft with a GPS device, rations and shark-fighting equipment before I think it's a good investment. I expect bang for my buck:

Oprah Winfrey wasn't the victim of racism when she asked to be shown a 35,000 Swiss franc ($38,000) crocodile handbag in Zurich last month, according to the owner of the boutique where the alleged slur took place.

Winfrey said in a television interview with Larry King that one example of racism she had encountered was when a shop assistant in Zurich refused to get her a bag because it was "too expensive." Winfrey, the billionaire talk-show host and producer, was in the Swiss city to attend Tina Turner's wedding.

"This has got nothing to with racism at all," Trudie Goetz, owner of the Trois Pommes chain, said in a telephone interview from Zurich today. "It was a misunderstanding and a communication problem. The client is king here, and we try to fulfill all wishes."

Whatever were the Swiss thinking not letting uber-rich Oprah Winfrey look at an obscenely expensive handbag? They are clearly racist against wealthy elitists who bait others when they don't get their own way.

Also: maybe the Russians had decency in mind. I don't know. All I know is that you are making a mountain out of a molehill for political points when such energy could be better expended decrying Putin when journalists and bloggers are jailed or killed or when countries in the Caucasus are invaded or when Gazprom cuts off supplies during winter:

Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird said he hopes "decency will prevail" when it comes to Russia's anti-gay law, but that despite his concern about Canadians going to the Olympics there, a boycott is not the answer.

For whom does one root- the materialistic white liberals who think they are being multicultural or the ever-offended (insert own percentage here) aboriginals?

H&M stores across Canada have pulled faux feather headdresses from their shelves after receiving complaints the items are offensive to aboriginals.

Kim Wheeler, an Ojibwa-Mohawk from Winnipeg, said she first saw the $15 fashion accessories while shopping with her daughter last week at the store in Vancouver's Pacific Centre mall.

"My first instinct was to buy all of them and throw them in the garbage," said Wheeler. "It's not honouring us. It's not flattering us. It's making a mockery of our culture.

"We just don't think it's cool." ...

Emily Scarlett, a Toronto-based spokeswoman for the Swedish fashion chain, said the hair pieces — patterned head bands with bright pink and purple flowers — were part of the company's summer music festival collection called "H&M Loves Music."

Flowered wreaths in honour of the sixties were also part of the line.

"Music festivals these days are really about experimenting with fashion and dressing your personality. And they're very heavily based on accessories, really accessorizing your look."

She said the company received three complaints about the headdresses and quickly made the decision to remove them from the market. An order to remove the items went out Tuesday to its 61 Canadian locations.

"Of course we never want to offend anybody or come off as insensitive," Scarlett said. "We're always about being there for our customers."

And now, an alien-looking forest in Poland. Enjoy.