The Obama administration is choosing its words much more carefully. They obviously need to show their displeasure, but cutting planned talks would hurt the US administration more than the Russians. It would be a win for Republicans vs. Obama administration, not US v. Russia.

The Snowden crisis is a way for Obama to avoid another icy summit with Putin, political analyst Lilia Shevtsova said.

“Canceling a one-on-one meeting with Putin is an optimal way out of the situation,” Shevtsova, a senior researcher with Moscow Carnegie Center, said. “Russia’s granting Snowden temporary refuge offered Obama a welcome chance not to be involved in yet one more meeting with Putin, but without really any constructive agenda to discuss.”

It seems to me it's another +1 to Snowden. Obama seems to be making the moves that Snowden wanted him to make, which is strategically not a situation you want to be in as a US President...

Russia responded by saying it is “disappointed” by the move, with Putin’s aide Yury Ushakov adding that the situation showed the US “is still not ready to build relations with Russia on an equal footing.” It is “clear” that the decision is related to Snowden, he said, reminding that the US for its part has repeatedly refused Russia’s past extradition requests.

So this is all puppet theater. Since there is no breakthrough they can announce, it's better to not have a public get together at all, rather than announce the meeting was a failure and yielded nothing.

Since I can't seem to get the embedding code correct (maybe just my browser) here's a direct link to the Frontline page:

Public Concern Over NSA Spying Increasing Rapidly As Congress Discovers Their Constituents Care About This Issue

As long as the government kept them convinced there was a monster hiding in the closet waiting attack they were too scared not to believe. As soon as they looked in the closet and saw the NSA instead that's who they're afraid of.

But they obviously had zero suspicion that David was associated with a terrorist organization or involved in any terrorist plot. Instead, they spent their time interrogating him about the NSA reporting which Laura Poitras, the Guardian and I are doing, as well the content of the electronic products he was carrying. They completely abused their own terrorism law for reasons having nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism: a potent reminder of how often governments lie when they claim that they need powers to stop "the terrorists", and how dangerous it is to vest unchecked power with political officials in its name.

This is obviously a rather profound escalation of their attacks on the news-gathering process and journalism. It's bad enough to prosecute and imprison sources. It's worse still to imprison journalists who report the truth. But to start detaining the family members and loved ones of journalists is simply despotic. Even the Mafia had ethical rules against targeting the family members of people they felt threatened by. But the UK puppets and their owners in the US national security state obviously are unconstrained by even those minimal scruples.

This is rather long, so I won't post a quote, but it's a list of non-stop surveillance insanity:

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/08/you-wont-believe-whats-going-on-with-government-spying-on-americans.html

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter … in the wake of the NSA spying scandal criticized the American political system. “America has no functioning democracy,” Carter said Tuesday at a meeting of the “Atlantic Bridge” in Atlanta.