“Vladimir Putin is a strong leader in the same way that arsenic is a strong drink,”

[elleng]

Garry Kasparov, the former world chess champion and a fierce critic of the Russian president, said in a Facebook post. “Praising a brutal K.G.B. dictator, especially as preferable to a democratically elected U.S. president, whether you like Obama or hate him, is despicable and dangerous.”

Putin, Admired by Donald Trump, Emphasizes Strength as Virtue.

MOSCOW — Tiger shooter, bare-chested horseman and architect of Russia’s revival as a muscular global power, President Vladimir V. Putin, dressed in a somber suit and tie, sat for over an hour this past week sipping tea from a delicate porcelain cup and offering earnest advice on how to improve housing, medical care and other services in a provincial town south of here.

State television broadcast the entire encounter, in between reports of Russian airstrikes in Syria ordered by Mr. Putin and gleeful accounts of how, thanks to a stunt by a pro-Putin athlete, the Russian flag appeared during the opening ceremony of the Paralympic Games in Rio de Janeiro despite a ban on the Russian squad because of a doping scandal.

It was, in the span of just a few hours, a dizzying display of the political mastery that Mr. Putin has over his country and his own image — a tough, can-do warrior; caring father of his people; and guarantor that no slight to Russia’s pride will go unanswered. . .

“He is popular. Maybe not 86 percent, but definitely more than 50 percent,” she continued. “That is democracy. I really don’t know about democracy anymore.”. . .

“All Western politicians that define themselves as out of the mainstream tend to have positive views of Russia and Putin,” he said. “They regard the Putin regime as hyper-efficient, contrary to the hesitant democratic and sometimes incompetent and paralyzed systems in their own countries.”

This efficiency, Mr. Kreko added, is mostly a myth but is widely believed. “We used to think that because of pluralist media, checks and balances, and globalization that people could not be brainwashed,” he said, “but what we see in Russia and also Hungary is that people can be brainwashed.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/11/world/europe/putin-admired-by-donald-trump-emphasizes-strength-as-virtue.html?

[yurbud]

1. our politicians do not care how good or bad he is for his people. Only how he does business

with the banks and transnational corporations that buy our politicians.

If Putin did as he was told those international financial interests, our government would not care if he beheaded people or boiled them alive, like our friends the Saudis and the recently dead dictator of Uzbekistan respectively.