I can't believe we bungled gifts to the Russians and the British in one day! If this was WWII we'd have offended both our major allies. I blogged about it at http://www.thehegemonist.com/2009/03/diplomatic-gifting.html

y'all need to change the name from Shadow Gov't to snarkblog.

you're usually more interesting

Shadow Government isn't any less snarky than the Passport.

Anyway, in addition to being embarrassing, there's just something amateurish about assuming that US and Russian interests will change overnight because of a buzzword and Obama's domestic and international popularity.

I would also argue that as far as missile defense, the Bush Administration went far to accommodate Russian concerns. They held a number of senior-level discussions dominated by missile defense, whether in 2+2, mil-to-mil, or technical contexts, and offered several forward leaning confidence building measures, which even included having Russian inspectors stationed full-time at the sites. Furthermore, the proposal to link the changes Iran's nuclear/ballistic missile programs to progress in putting the two sites online was first made by Gates last year and should not be seen as some sort of a break with Bush's purported cowboy diplomacy. Perhaps mistakes were made in the initial roll out of the deployment plan, with insufficient communication with NATO and Russia, but to say that the Administration disregarded Russian concerns and acted unilaterally is inaccurate and strikes me as a cheap appeal to the simplified narrative of the Bush years.

Shadow Government isn't any less snarky than the Passport.

Anyway, in addition to being embarrassing, there's just something amateurish about assuming that US and Russian interests will change overnight because of a buzzword and Obama's domestic and international popularity.

I would also argue that as far as missile defense, the Bush Administration went far to accommodate Russian concerns. They held a number of senior-level discussions dominated by missile defense, whether in 2+2, mil-to-mil, or technical contexts, and offered several forward leaning confidence building measures, which even included having Russian inspectors stationed full-time at the sites. Furthermore, the proposal to link the changes Iran's nuclear/ballistic missile programs to progress in putting the two sites online was first made by Gates last year and should not be seen as some sort of a break with Bush's purported cowboy diplomacy. Perhaps mistakes were made in the initial roll out of the deployment plan, with insufficient communication with NATO and Russia, but to say that the Administration disregarded Russian concerns and acted unilaterally is inaccurate and strikes me as a cheap appeal to the simplified narrative of the Bush years.

Agree 100% about the Snarkiness. I totally sympathize with Secretary Clinton and her good-natured error; I made a similar mistake due to language and cultural barriers with a new neighbor last summer. . .

The Associated Press would like Americans to believe that our representatives have no clue what they are doing. Judging from comments on the various message forums Americans are gullibly buying the simplistic explanation that our State department supposedly doesn’t know how to translate the word “reset” into Russian. Nonsense! The Russian word peregruzka appears at the top of the button, spelled in latin letters. If this was meant to be a literal translation, why would the letters be in Latin? The english translation for this word is “overload” and anyone that knows how to type a few letters into an online translation website can easily figrue that much out. An english word appears below the button and that word is “reset”. These words do very much make sense together: when something is overloaded (like a circuit), you reset it.

Continued here:
http://rebellionbrewery.com/?p=312

Rebellion,

In your grasp for some deeper meaning on the reset button thing, you presume too much machiavellian competence on the part of our government.

I would fire off some snark and imply that your expert recognition of conspiratorial symbolism is a symptom of prolonged exposure to tinfoil sheeting on the scalp, but on the off chance you are employing some kind of dry humor I am missing, I will hold back. I am a Prole after all, and can only boast of a State School education; we never covered political symbolism at my college, even though it was a pretty decent State University in New England.

So I will defer to you on the deeper meaning behind the reset button, despite the fact that I just do not see it, and deem it hilarious to presume this was anything beyond an inept gaffe by some State Department flunky in protocol. Despite your impressive theory, I still believe this button thing is a screw-up that will probably get pinned on some new administration political appointee who is simply out of his league, a State University-educated University schlep like me!

But since you so astutely recognize the symbolism in seemingly inept diplomatic acts most naive Americans miss, can you fill us all in on the sinister motive behind the President's lame gift of 25 classic movies to UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown? I am completely perplexed on that one, I must admit. . .

This is not a big deal. Certainly not earth shattering in anyway. The only people that this is a story too are the Hillary haters. To the rest of us, it's a non issue.