Why are they calling Obama "The Bear"? "Isn't Russia associated with the Bear?"

Asks LuAnn Zieman, commenting on the post "Bears, beer and horse heads: What exactly is going on with the leader of the free world?," which identifies "Bear" as a nickname for Obama that his "top staffers" are pushing as he roams about the nation doing campaign-style photo ops.

Why "Bear"? Zieman wonders whether the idea is intentionally to associate Obama with Russia: "Maybe this is his Putin moment because, after all, Putin's been making him look bad for quite awhile."

Russia is my association too, partly because this old Ronald Reagan ad is deeply lodged in my brain:



There's a bear in the woods....

Twitchy is irked by the "Bear" moniker.

And look, Obama talking about himself arrives at a meeting and says "The Bear is loose." Ridiculous, but before you anti-Obamites run with this, remember that Sarah Palin has long been calling herself a "Mama Grizzly" ("If you thought pit bulls were tough, you don't want to mess with mama grizzlies").