heh. Do you live in US? If you do (and only if you do), will it be risky for your life, health or freedom to write tweet "I hate POTUS"? Is there a 100% guarantee that you will be beaten by police if you dare enough to show your political disagreement with the president on the street? If no - you're living in a VERY different country. I'm not fan of US, but comparison of US and Russia is a really ridiculous thing.

I live in the US. I would expect that if I went downtown on a street corner tonight and started screaming "#$%@% the president", I would get some dark looks, and perhaps some covert signs of approval. The police might show up, but if they did, it would be because I was disturbing the peace, not for the content of what I said.

I haven't actually tried the experiment, so I could be under-estimating what the reaction would be. But, yeah, I agree. People who equate the two countries don't get it.

That said, doombolt quoted a colleague as saying "all of my canaries are now dead". Well, most of mine are still alive, but they don't look too healthy...