UKRAINE DISASTER: BLAME IT ON OBAMA/CLINTON/NULAND

OBAMA’S UKRAINE BLUNDER

Result:  Another USA sponsored dysfunctional state.  Economic decline in Ukraine.  Festering war in Donbass, Ukraine’s loss of Crimea to Russia, Ukraine loses access to Azov Sea, Ukraine loss of commercial port of Mariupol.  Revenge of Mr. Putin on Obama and Clinton in 2016 elections. 

Yeah great work Obama!  Perhaps you and Ms Nuland of the State Department better scratch off any trips to the Ukraine. 

In 2014 the Obama Administration whose State Department was shot through with neocons, and Clinton arm-chair warriors—a sinister group who never let an opportunity to create conflict around the world escape their attention and the attendant economic chaos, human suffering, death and destruction that goes with it.  One wonders how these folks were not summarily fired when Obama—who campaigned against such policies—was elected.  

The now infamous Bush-Cheney crowd had led the USA into what is now known as the worst foreign policy blunder in all of US history—the Iraq War.   Somehow Obama inherited these folks, but being a novice had little expertise or gumption to fire them.  Sadly, they led Obama into more foreign adventurism, this time to interference in a nation on the  border with Russia—the Ukraine.  I guess the swathe of failed states, death and destruction they had sown across the Middle East was not enough of a sad display of the limits of American military might for them.  This Obama group turned their attention to the Baltic and Eastern Europe as another area to create dysfunctional states, where the blunt force of American might could be squandered.   Obama agreed to it.  

Obama and his CIA spent millions of dollars to help destabilize the government of Ukraine’s moderately pro-Russian President, Viktor Yanukovitch.  Obama’s intention appears to have been an attempt to lure Ukraine out of the Russian economic sphere and encourage it to join NATO. This  was a clearly seen in the EU (and in Russia) as an existential threat to Russia—and was sure to be strenuously resisted.  

The Obama policy of poking the Russian bear in the eye was the act of a bad chess player and a novice foreign policy team.  To this day it remains unclear.what the Obama strategy was—or was there a strategy?  Ukraine is a border nation, with a powerful neighbor.  It is a state where a large portion of the population is of ethnic Russian extraction, and whose social, religious and economic ties to the powerful eastern neighbor are very old and very strong.  Imagine the Russias trying to lure Canada away from USA economic dominance and into the sphere of the Russian federation. What hope would it have of success?  And how would we react?   

Obama’s Ukraine policy was clearly not a well thought out.  Did it rise to the stupidity of the Bay of Pigs, the Iraq War,  and Johnson’s Vietnam fiasco?  Perhaps not, but it is up there high on the list, near the top.. 

Within a short time of the Obama Administration’s intervention, pro-Russian President Victor Yanukovitch, was driven from office by street demonstrations and riots which turned violent.  Obama immediately helped install the pro-western regime of former candy manufacturer turned politician Petro  Poroshenko.   

At the time of the unrest and fall of the legitimate government, DC talking heads touted the actions of covert American operatives in the Ukraine as a  foreign policy victory for Obama—but very soon it became clear to all that it was a Pyrrhic one. In the end Obama and the USA were outfoxed by Mr. Putin (who is a much  better chess player).  

What were the end results of Mr. Obama’s foolish attempts at  intervention in the Ukraine ?  A festering war in eastern Ukraine known as the Donbass War (thousands killed, over two million displaced and no end in sight), economic downturn and disaster for Ukraine, the loss of strategically critical Crimea to Russia, the loss of Ukraine of access to a good part of its coastline in the Azov Sea and the important commercial ports of Mariupol in that body of water.  The Azov Sea has now become in effect a Russian sea...effectively closing off the large Ukrainian ports of Mariupol and Berdyansk from normal traffic.  Finally, Mr. Putin even seems to have attempted to extracted his revenge upon Mr Obama and Ms Clinton with his well published attempts at Russian intervention in the 2016 US elections.  

Perhaps the present hatred for all things Russian in Washington DC appears to have its source in the Obama Blunder.  

Big looser that Obama! But the present Administration should not make us all losers by continuing the failed and foolish policies of past administrations.  

COHEN LIED—ABOUT A “NO DEAL” IN RUSSIA—BIG DEAL? NO!

Bloomberg: Cohen lied about “closely guarded Trump secret”.  NYTimes:” Trump lawyer, felon and Russian general chase a Moscow deal”.

If the public trust is ever to be regained by the institutions of the state and the media—they will have to stop trying to generate indictments and for the media stitching together stories out of thin air.  But they seem unable to help themselves and they continue to erode the pubic trust.

The American public has common sense—they know when a story is worth the ink and paper (or electric current) it consumes is worth it or not.  Let’s take this story of Mr. Cohen’s (a Trump attorney) lie—about a long term plan by the Trump organization to build a sky scraper in Moscow,

All  businesses have  plans for the future—ideas for the growth, for entering a new venue,  pie in the sky projects...that is the stuff of the American entrepreneur.  Most of those plans may never come to fruition.  But some may.  That spirit of innovation is what makes the USA the greatest economy in the world.

So what is the big deal?  Yes candidate Trump—still a US businessman—had long term plans to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.  He had set in motion those tentative plans and his associates—as in any business large and small—continued to follow the potential plan.  What is the big story here?  

There is no indication of any wrong doing.  In fact the other side—the Democrats— had more interaction, sent activists to Moscow, used foreign organizations in the UK etc,etc. and had more sinister connections to the Russians than anything that has surfaced about the Trump candidacy or the Trump Administration.after the election.

These stories do not sit well with a common sense audience of Americans. 

MODERN PARENTING GONE AWRY— AND SAYING “NO” TO KIDS

Putting the parental “N” word back into use.  Tough Love Parenting.  Learning to say NO to your teenagers. 

After the Thanksgiving Holiday we are all back to our individual lives, having had to suffer through the enforced ritual of togetherness imposed on us in our family gatherings or at the holiday dinner table.  Those of us of more advanced age who were faced with teenagers (and their permissive parents) at the holiday table were sure to be dismayed by the lack of any semblance of polite behavior among our nation’s youth and of the self imposed impotence of parents. 

Their teenage heads bowed over their tiny screens, their thumbs feverishly working the micro key board, not one of these kids paused to look up from the rectangles of blue light to greet a new arrival, to thank the host, to nod a “thank you’ to the server, or utter any signs of gratitude or appreciation for  the many delicacies placed before them-the result of hours of hard work.    Not one of them manifested  even a passing  interest in giving up their digital activities (either passive mouth-gaping observation of some electronic game or feverish text-messaging) for actual interaction or communication with the live people sitting next to them around the table.    They apparently preferred the digital world— and no one in the room had the authority or temerity to alter their impolite behavior.  What will become of these individuals?  

Their parents,  if they were not themselves occupied in a similar manner, were unable to alter their child’s behavior to a more socially acceptable one.  A parental request such as: “Johnny please put that phone away” was generally met with a muffled child-grunt, but no change in  behavior.  Any further, more direct and firm parental requests would be dangerous to the parent’s reputation.  Since it would too often result in a response such as: “Don’t bother me Mom”—revealing just how little control, respect  or.direction the  parent had over the child.  Any more firm and direct parental request  would be just further verification of how out of control so called “parenting” is.  

Modern parents apparently try to be “buddies”, accomplices, and co-actors  with their still-developing charges rather than asserting authority.  In fact “authority, or control” seems to be two other banned words.  

The result is that not one of these so-called “parents”  knows how to say “NO” with finality and determination. 

The word “NO” seems to have become the parental “N” word forever banned to the dustbin of history.  Parental permissiveness and fear of asserting themselves —being an authoritarian” —-have left children to decide for themselves what they—with their inexperienced and still developing minds to decide what is  permissible or appropriate —if they were to ever think about such things.

The facts are that children are still developing.  Their brains are not fully wired.  As teenagers —many psychologists claim—these developing humans are prone to excesses and irrational behavior.  Perhaps, as these scientists suggest, childhood lack of control and tendency to push the limits of behavior are part of an evolved human development that thousands of years ago encouraged childhood innovation and experimentation.  Such behaviors sometimes led to positive results—a new food source, or a better route to the spring—but it more often than not had failed and deadly results too...but the human family could afford those losses at that time.   Today those tendencies have to be put under more control.  However, modern parents with their often more than two decades of (hopefully) mental growth and experience are loath to use or even assert that  extra brain power and life experience to direct their still mentally unformed progeny to a more survivable modern life style. 

For hundred of thousands of years human parents have been (yes) controlling and (yes) directing their off-spring to prepare them for survival.  The ancients knew that they could not simply push their progeny  to the edge of the cave and expect them to survive in the wilderness.  Not a chance.  In the last several decades however, modern parents seem to have done just that.  They have abandoned their essential responsibility to the new generation and  left them—with their young brains still incomplete and developing—to their own devices and behavior patterns.

For modern parents the first thing to accept is that you are the leader...with the fully developed brain and with more than two decades of life experience over your child.

The second thing is to lean how to say “NO” and mean it.  You have the power of the purse and the power of parenthood at your disposal.  You can restrict access to electronics or encourage them to pick up after themselves, do some chores around the house, keep their rooms neat, perhaps even be responsible for their own possessions.  Each interaction can be a learning experience for them. 

The third factor is to practice TOUGH LOVE.  You must honestly decide what is best for this child. Not what is best for you or the easy way out.  Then do that.  You can’t be a buddy. You can be a friend— you are the parent.  That requires you to make honest best-decisions for a still incompletely formed youngster that will in your best assessment benefit that child when he or she is an adult .  

That might mean insisting the child pursues their piano lessons, or joins a travel team, or does not do those things. It may not be easy to do but the question to answer is: what is best for this child?    

Big responsibility!..But fully worthwhile endeavor. 

  

IGNORING THE EVIDENCE OF KHASHOGGI MURDER AND DISMEMBERMENT

On November 11, 2018 the AP reported on the discovery of the bodies of two young sisters, both Saudi nationals. The bodies—taped together with duct tape—washed up on the shores of  the Hudson River in New York City.  Evidence seems to suggest that the sisters were  alive when they were dumped into the river.

Other evidence indicates that the young women were seeking asylum in the USA after escaping from their father’s home in Virginia.  Their father traveled regularly to Saudi Arabia and maintained a home in the USA.  The NYC police are investigating the case as a possible suicide. (?)  But other evidence seems to indicate that the two young women were fleeing male relatives who in Saudi society have complete control over the lives (and deaths) of young unmarried women.  Male relatives control who these women can marry, where they can work, where they can travel, etc. etc.  through the so called “guardian” system.    The NYC investigators, always a bit hesitant at pointing the finger of criminality at the Saudi government, should evaluate how the two sisters were able to  tape themselves together, and then in this bound up condition, managed to throw themselves into the Hudson River.  It seems on first evaluation that what is more likely— that rather than a suicide—this is a murder case.  But then US officials tend to look the other way when it involves the Saudi government.

Which bring me to the case of the murder and dismemberment then dissolution of the body (in acid) of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.  The Turkish government has released voice recordings of the brutal death and dismemberment  of the journalist.  However, National Security.Advisor to President Trump, John Bolton, who has not heard the tapes personally, claims that the tapes, which record the screams of the victim as well as the voices of the perpetrators (all liked closely to the top levels of government) as they dismembered the body, claims that there is no evidence to implicate the Saudi Crown Prince Bin Salman in the actual murder.  


I do not see this brutal murder being “swept under the rug”...even though the body of poor Mr Khashoggi—now reduced to its chemical elements—will never be recovered.  The stain of such a brutal act will spread to smear all those who  ignore the facts and facilitate the cover-up of those who clearly culpable.

There is an element of ugly hypocrisy here as well from the Trump Administration and the US media.  I recall the case of  President Putin of Russia (who is not purchasing “100 billion dollars worth of war materiel” or able to control world oil prices, was very quickly and summarily indited, and found guilty by the media—-of poisoning former Russian spy Sergei and his daughter Yulia Skripal in Salisbury, UK.  There was no credible evidence to attribute the crime to Putin, but that did not stop the media or Mr. Trump...it served their immediate political needs.

Mr. Trump must stand up for the rule of law and insist that those responsible—even in high places—must and should be punished.  To do otherwise will simply be unacceptable.

So Mr. Bolton please go back and listen to those tapes.

FRENCH PM MACRON ON NATIONALISM: UTTER BS

French Prime Minister Macron Defines “Nationalism” as the Anthitheses of “Patriotism”.

Macron has some nerve!!!

At a ceremony on Paris to celebrate the end of the “Great War” (WWI) Prime Minister Macron took the opportunity in his opening speech in Paris to define nationalism as an evil demon to be repressed with with President Trump, PM Merkel, PM Putin and others in the audience.

What irony!  Macron’s speech had as its author the head of of one of the most blatantly nationalistic nations on earth: France a nation which has benefitted from the good will of the leadership and sacrifice people of the USA in both world wars.  Macron —suffering abysmal confidence ratings at home (21%) would like to change the subject of his competence to lead and perhaps set himself above the leadership of the attending nations.  But his blather concerning nationalism come off as so much nonsense.

Who among the leadership of the nations attending  would be ready to ignore the needs of their own nationals when presented with a choice regarding its well being or its economy? .  All those present have always used their political, geographic, and economic power to advance the circumstances of their own nations,  The only nation that might claim to have acted altruistically at a few times in the past is the USA.  Yes (for France and Europe) we sacrificed the lives of more than one-hundred thousand young men at the service of the European nations between 1916 and 1918.  Let’s not even discuss WWII,

AS for Germany, PM Merkel has used the EU as an erzats German “common market”, to dump their manufactured wares and use the cheap labor of other EU nations all at the expense of less affluent Spain, Italy and Greece— to name only a few.  France, Germany and almost all the EU members have all acted for their self interest (as closet nationalists) limiting their financial support for NATO  as they live the good life—by foisting the costs of their  defense onto the shoulders of the American tax payer.   They live under the military umbrella of the USA and its tax burdened working citizens.  Macron also proposed forming a “European Army”!  What an empty threat that is.  France has put off meeting its NATO commitments of 2% of its GDP until 2025!  The fact that they live under USA protections allows them to out spend us on domestic well fare, healthcare, infrastructure and all manner of goodies that workers here in the USA can only gasp at in jealousy.

Mr. Trump is the only person prenst who is honstely telling it like it is/. The fact is that all nations makes decisions that benefit themselves.  That is what ‘nationalism is.  Only in America have we been saddled so long with a phony sense of “do goodism” that is not reciprocated elsewhere.  Furthermore these global policies framed as international cooperation —only seem to open the doors for giant global industries—but ignore the welfare of the small businessman and the average hard working American man and woman.

Talk is cheap—and meaningless coming from Macron.

Each one of those attending nations is a self serving—nationalist state.  They all are beneficiaries  of the largess of the USA and its overburdened tax payers.

UNDERMINING POPULAR ELECTIONS

A DANGEROUS TREND: THE DELEGITIMIZATION OF POPULAR ELECTIONS

September 16, 2018 (Posted 11-10-18)

There seems to be a popular and almost world-wide reaction in western democracies  to legitimate elections—but only those the national establishment do not like.  When the results of an election of a referendum finds support for policies or candidates the often corrupt and “long in tooth establishment” does not support they use all the power in the establishment arsenal to delegitimize the candidate or avoid the manifest will of the people. 

In the USA the Democrats, the deep state, the old guard GOP, and their facilitators in the media and “entertainment” industry are attempting to hound out of office a legitimately elected President (who took 30 out of the 50 states in the Electoral College) but who does not obediently and slavishly hew to the “party line”.  

While in the UK, a legitimate referendum on EU membership surprised the old guard establishment with a solid vote to exit the EU.  After nearly two years of stalling and “study” —-the talk today out of Westminster is a proposal to set forth another referendum—-because the establishment types do not like the results of the first one.  

In both cases the —so-called democracies—are undermining the very democratic principles that they so often claim to cherish and support.  The policies these ‘democrats” are  espousing  more closely resemble dictatorships and tin pot banana republics where democracy is only window dressing.  Then there are the policies of the Chinese Communists—who claim to have “democratic” elections too.  But in China the party big-wigs reserve for themselves the power to choose the candidates for election.  In those circumstances the Chinese political elites reassure the voters: “We choose the candidates then you can have your “free and democratic vote”.  Is this the way our vaunted western democracies are headed?.  

The Democrats and their facilitators in the popular media are playing a dangerous game.  In their attempts at “resistance” they, like the mother cleaning the proverbial baby bathtub are mindlessly throwing the cherished infant  out with the bath water.  The Democrats are so focused on turning Trump out of office, (by investigations, or impeachment) they would tear up our entire Constitutional democratic system to rid themselves of Mr. Trump—a legitimately and democratically elected President.  

They forget that Mr. Trump is only a temporary occupant of the Oval Office.  His term will run its course.  The actions of the  Democrats and their minions in the media and Hollywood are toying with actions which will undermine our nation’s confidence in the “We the People” part of our Constitution, and in the legitimacy of our free elections.  They would tear down the national edifice to prop up one of their own. And after setting these precedents how will they react when in another election, perhaps with a Democrat in office, the other side “resists” too.  

They are setting the stage for chaos and disaster.