{"id":188,"date":"2008-08-10T18:29:13","date_gmt":"2008-08-10T16:29:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ofcourseimright.com\/?p=188"},"modified":"2008-08-11T02:52:29","modified_gmt":"2008-08-11T00:52:29","slug":"back-in-the-ussr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/?p=188","title":{"rendered":"Back in the U.S.S.R."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-186 alignleft\" style=\"border: 0pt none; margin-left: 5px; margin-right: 5px;\" title=\"Soviet Flag\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ofcourseimright.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/08\/soviet-flagsvg.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"198\" height=\"99\" \/>You may have thought the Soviet Union long dead, and thus it should be, but it is not.\u00a0 When the Berlin Wall tumbled, so did an entire corrupt way of life for many bureaucrats and butchers.\u00a0 But under Boris Yeltsin an entire new wave of corruption came to exist in the form of the oligarghs.\u00a0 The reaction to those thieves was Vladamir Putin, who even though his puppet has been installed, still runs the show in Moscow.<\/p>\n<p>Under Putin, yet another wave of thugery has gone on.\u00a0 One cannot criticize the government.\u00a0 Crime still runs rampant, only now it&#8217;s organized.\u00a0 Gangs run massive botnets.\u00a0 The Soviets have kicked out all foreign entrepeneurs they don&#8217;t like (read: anyone who invested in oil).\u00a0 And now the coup de grace: they are attacking their neighbors in Georgia.<\/p>\n<p>President Bush has stood idly by and let all of this happen.\u00a0 The real threat isn&#8217;t Iraq, it&#8217;s Mr. Putin and his thugs.\u00a0 Perhaps he&#8217;s scared of getting beat up for saying these sorts of things.\u00a0 I am.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You may have thought the Soviet Union long dead, and thus it should be, but it is not.\u00a0 When the Berlin Wall tumbled, so did an entire corrupt way of life for many bureaucrats and butchers.\u00a0 But under Boris Yeltsin an entire new wave of corruption came to exist in the form of the oligarghs.\u00a0 &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/?p=188\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Back in the U.S.S.R.&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=188"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":190,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188\/revisions\/190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}