A quick word about Russia.

For some strange reason, there's been a massive boost in page views from Russia, and by massive, I'm talking hundreds of views over normal. So I thought I'd take a bit of time to talk about Russia-US.

Russia-US relations are truly weird

There is ongoing cooperation in various things, whether NASA-Roscosmos, or on easing Iran's nuclear program, while at the same time there are Ukrainian-related economic and targeted sanctions.

As the US restarts relations with Cuba, a continued ally of Russia, the US is cranking up sanctions against Argentina, a Russian ally.

We went at one point hearing US conservatives rant about rapprochement between Obama and Medvedev, to US conservatives cheering Putin's masculinity when he confronted Obama on a series of issues, despite these same conservatives demanding that Obama ramp up the confrontation with Putin.

The conservatives are all the same

Conservatives in both countries are totally against cooperation of any kind. They would rather crank up military might and speed up their military infrastructure buildups along the periphery, to create opportunities for direct confrontation and an expansion of influence.

In Russia you have old KGB members and former Soviet military who seem to find comfort in knowing that the US is an enemy. In the US we have old white men who continually push to spread US bases around the world and boost military spending (first by eliminating only that portion of the sequester cuts that affect the military budgets).

Conservatives in the US have to disguise their racism directed at Obama, while Russian conservatives have no social norms holding them back from attacking the skin color of Obama. This dichotomy is perfectly illustrated, here. In it, you'll note that the Russian MP clearly states that the image came from American friends -- I've noted before, if you're in the conservative email circle, you get all sorts of outrageously racist stuff.

Our nations have commonalities

Yeah, we all know about crony capitalism in Russia, but we have crony politics in the US. Koch money buying political influence is no different than Putin shakedown -- they're opposite sides of the coin.

Both countries continue to invest heavily in war machines that, unleashed, would destroy the Earth 10x over, even as both countries have mutually reduced their nuclear stockpiles over the last 30 years.

You think that Russia is hard on the press? The Obama Administration has gone after more than a few journalists, in search of leakers who've tried to shed light on US policies. It seems ironic that Russia is a refuge for Snowden, a guy who exposed a massive lie being propagated by some members of the US government, on domestic spying, and yet here we are.

These are, of course, all the wrong commonalities you'd want to share, but that's life.