The Last Ditch by Tom Paine

Obama heads to Moscow for reset summit | World | Reuters.

I shall be in the same city as "the One" for a day or two. Yawn. I shall work from home tomorrow. The traffic in Moscow is quite bad enough without the POTUS motorcade.

I fear Mr Obama's hosts will have some fun at his expense this week. They enjoy these diplomatic set pieces and are rather good at them. Perhaps the White House is learning though. The President's undiplomatic "one foot in the cold war" remark only makes sense as a preparatory cover for failure.

It's a shame relations between the two countries are no better. Given a more friendly chat, President Obama's hosts could have shared some useful experiences of socialised medicine with him, for example. Future generations of Americans would have benefitted from that. As it is, I doubt either side will learn anything.

More strutting. More posturing. More money thrown away. Government business as usual.