i think he is different from vladimir putin. i would love to see him be his own man. he is very much against corruption. whether he can rise to challenge vladimir putin when it comes to that, because i think it would have to come to that, i would be very anxious to see. i read what he has to say every day. the russian presidential website is excellent. what is it in english? >>-- >> is in english? >> it is in -- is it in english? >> it is in russian and english and that is a good way to learn russian if you want to. >>we contract with a knowledge f one who set up a satellite system for columbia to listen in on soviet television. we have the same operation at our house. it involves a big dish and a little computer. since the soviet satellite is not geostationary, the soviet satellite keeps moving. the trick to latch onto it is to get a system that can follow it and try to gedrafted. -- and track it. the computer follows it for a little while. in my office, i can watch color soviet television from about 4:30 p.m. until about 7:30 a.m.. then i get live soviet radio out o

there's a danger here for the current administration to swallow this revisionist history that vladimir putin has conjured up. i have heard him personally deliver this to robert gates. he says that in the 1990's, are stupid russian leaders acquiesced while the west took advantage of us and now because we are sitting on oil money, we are back. conveniently forgetting about $55 billion in grants and various other things that were done by the bush and clinton administrations. to ease russia's transition. i think it is a mistake to a accede to that. it becomes a justification for the dismantling of russian democracy and its attitude toward its neighbors. i think we did not do a good job of bush 43 of doing that. is the cost of primacy worth the candle? the problem is there are costs to being the primary player into the and the national system. there also costs to not being a player. if the united states does not have the reserve currency, there are many implications for our domestic political economy. sam huntington wrote about this. i agree with what he said, a world with u.s. policy is a world