Category Archives: General Interest

Here’s a must read on Ukraine:  “Ukraine Is Hopeless…But Not Serious”, in David P. Goldman’s, Spengler column at PJ Media.

Best lines:

“Ukraine isn’t a country: it’s a Frankenstein monster composed of pieces of dead empires, stitched together by Stalin. It has never had a government in the Western sense of the term after the collapse of the Soviet Union gave it independence, just the equivalent of the family offices for one predatory oligarch after another–including the “Gas Princess,” Yulia Tymoshenko.”

Here’s another:

“As for the Crimea: Did anyone seriously think that Vladimir Putin would let the main port of Russia’s Black Sea fleet fall into unfriendly hands? Russia will take the Crimea, and the strategic consequences will be nil. We couldn’t have a strategic confrontation if we wanted it. How would we get troops or ships into the Black Sea area in the first place in order to have a confrontation? Perhaps the Belgiums will send in their army instead. I suppose we need to denounce the Russians for violating Ukraine’s territorial integrity.”

He offers a great solution for what we should do, but go read the entire article, to get the full impact.  Bravo, Mr. Goldman, for daring to speak truth to insipid reporting!

“Still, the influence of all that youthful television-watching is present today. In a book on the inner workings of Obama’s presidential reelection campaign, Politico’s Glenn Thrush reports that although Obama’s biographers “have been more enamored with his complexity,” Obama himself “seeks shallower waters, especially in times of crisis.” When the going gets tough in the White House, Thrush says, the president plays sports and watches ESPN. Indeed, while Obama’s administration was beset by scandals regarding improper IRS investigations and the death of U.S. officials in Benghazi, the New York Times’s Peter Baker reported that Obama “talked longingly of ‘going Bulworth,’ a reference to a little-remembered 1998 Warren Beatty movie about a senator who risked it all to say what he really thought.” Thrush, it seems, was right that movies and TV served as Obama’s version of “comfort food.”” –

– Commentary Magazine – “The Pop Presidency of Barack Obama”, 10-01-13

So, once again the President is nowhere to be seen yesterday, as the situation escalated in Crimea.  Reports surfaced that the National Security Team huddled at the White House for a meeting, but the leading from behind captain of the team skipped the meeting.  Of course, his handlers rushed to assure America and the world, that the President was briefed.

Anyone with some functioning brain cells should have seen Putin’s moves in Crimea coming.  Putin comes from the Cold War era geopolitical school, where he learned from hard school of knocks experiences.  He reads history, he studies maps, he actually takes his leadership responsibilities deadly serious.  Russian influence in Crimea looms vastly important to Russian national security and obviously, he will not cede control of Sevastapol to protestors  or Ukrainian authorities hostile to Russia or blustering Western Neville Chamberlains (thanks to David Duff for bringing up Chamberlain).  They won’t allow a power vacuum to threaten their Black Sea Fleet and beyond that Putin surely possesses some grand strategic visions for Russia and at the moment, who in the West will do more than issue hollow threats?

For a pragmatic view of Ukraine’s crisis, here is David Duff’s, ‘In which I laud, the One and Only Obama’.  The Russians have had their Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol for centuries, so let them keep it.  If you want to get your dander up, start paying attention to Russian, Iranian and Chinese military moves in the Western Hemisphere (Monroe Doctrine, anyone)- where they’re creeping up on us.  If the Europeans want to do more about Ukraine, let them muster up more than rhetoric.  The world stage offers  plenty of room from some upstarts to take center stage, since President Obama prefers to loaf in the spectator seats, surreptitiously munching on his chips.  Definitely more concerned about hiding from Michelle’s food police than he is about international crises.

Power vacuums keep expanding and unlike our leader from behind, many of our adversaries don’t wait for polite discussions to fill them.  Rant all you want at Putin, but it’s President Obama and wimpy western resolve that Putin gauged and he sure understands this sort of capitalization.  The cost of acting is minimal and the potential rewards are great, wow, Putin the adventure capitalist …. the world gone mad, I say.

Oh yes, “the past is prologue”.

And, as the world spins closer to chaos, let us remember that oft-quoted sage once more – “I believe it is peace in our time.”  Let’s at least give President Obama credit for surpassing  Henry Kissenger’s  measure of a country’s diplomacy, “No country can act wisely simultaneously in every part of the globe at every moment of time.”  President Obama, the inept,  doesn’t act at all….. but Putin the new adventure capitalist takes all the risks.  Don’t worry though, this waffler-in-chief, hiding somewhere in the White House watching ESPN,  can sure stand tough on gutting our military, even though he can’t read a world map and he doesn’t have time for international crises.  Simultaneously, Putin is securing his Black Sea Fleet and Russian influence in Ukraine.