{"id":3492,"date":"2013-09-12T20:26:52","date_gmt":"2013-09-12T20:26:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/?p=3492"},"modified":"2013-09-12T20:26:52","modified_gmt":"2013-09-12T20:26:52","slug":"putin-stomps-on-300-million-sets-of-toes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=3492","title":{"rendered":"Putin stomps on 300 million sets of toes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Russian President Vladimir Putin is bucking for a pie in the face next time he comes to the United States of America, the world’s remaining superpower, with the world’s leading economy and a history of extraordinary achievement.<\/p>\n

You see, the Russian strongman has dissed the United States by declaring that we aren’t “exceptional.”<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2013\/09\/12\/politics\/putin-syria-editorial-reaction\/index.html?hpt=hp_t1<\/p>\n

Putin put proverbial pen to paper in an op-ed column that appeared this week in the New York Times in which he pushed for completion of a deal proposed by the Russians to have Syria turn over its chemical weapons cache to international inspectors. The idea is to end the avert a threatened U.S. strike against Syria in retaliation for the government’s gassing of civilians.<\/p>\n

But it’s the view he holds about America that has gotten the most buzz here. U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., said Putin’s remarks made him feel like vomiting. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said he felt “insulted” by Putin’s view.<\/p>\n

Of course, the American exceptionalism mantra has been a political staple here for the past several years. Republicans and Democrats alike are proud to declare — with justification, I should add — that the United States remains the most exceptional nation on the planet.<\/p>\n

We give more money than any other country on Earth to fight infectious diseases such as AIDS; we are the first nation to respond to disaster relief whenever and wherever it occurs; our nation was founded on the belief that we should be free from religious oppression; we pride ourselves in our allowing open and sometimes angry debate over government policy. I think that’s all pretty exceptional.<\/p>\n

Can the Big Ol’ Russian Bear make such claims?<\/p>\n

Have we made mistakes? Certainly. All great nations have skeletons in their closets. I daresay that Russia’s closet is quite a bit more full than ours, given that it’s existed for far longer. Then again, I suspect its skeletons would outnumber ours if you march forward from, say, 1776 to the present.<\/p>\n

Vladimir Putin owes this country an apology.<\/p>\n\n

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Russian President Vladimir Putin is bucking for a pie in the face next time he comes to the United States of America, the world’s remaining superpower, with the world’s leading economy and a history of extraordinary achievement. You see, the Russian strongman has dissed the United States by declaring that we aren’t “exceptional.” http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2013\/09\/12\/politics\/putin-syria-editorial-reaction\/index.html?hpt=hp_t1 Putin … Continue reading Putin stomps on 300 million sets of toes<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[942,2523,4491,5125],"class_list":["post-3492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-chemical-weapons","tag-john-boehner","tag-syria-crisis","tag-vladimir-putin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3492\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}