Tag Archives: Putin

International news

No surprise that Trump would praise Putin

Does anyone really profess to be surprised or amazed that Donald Trump would heap praise on Vladimir Putin over his attempted takeover of a sovereign nation?

Donald, let us remember, once referred to North Korean Marxist dictator Kim Jong Un as a “smart cookie,” and professed to have “fallen in love” with the guy who starves his people to death while living in luxury and spending lots of money developing nuclear weapons.

He also has lamented how strongmen in other countries get tons of praise from local media, apparently ignoring the obvious fact that the government in those countries control the media; that ain’t the case in the United States of America, where the nation’s founders took great care to ensure that the media are free of government interference.

Now he calls his pal Vlad’s declaring the independence of two breakaway Ukraine provinces “savvy” for making that statement. All Putin did was provoke President Biden into invoking economic sanctions against Russia.

Yeah, Donald loves dictators. He wishes he could become one of them. Indeed, he made an effort at it on 1/6 in his effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

The dipsh** should be heading for prison.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

International news

Putin’s launches frightening power quest

Vladimir Putin’s lust for power is an astonishing sight to behold as the world awaits what appears to be coming: a violent invasion of a sovereign nation.

The Russian dictator is concocting excuses to invade Ukraine, a nation that once belonged to the Soviet Union’s empire of states, but which has established itself as an important independent nation on the western border of what is now the Russian Federation.

Putin wants it back. He appears set to send in the armed forces on a beeline to Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital city. He believes he will take control of the city of 2.8 million residents in short order. What happens next is anyone’s guess.

President Biden has done a good job of gathering allied support in leveling stern and damaging economic sanctions against Putin and the Russian economy. Germany has announced plans to shut down a natural gas pipeline from Russia, which is going to inflict serious harm to Putin’s nation. Biden is set to lower the economic boom on Russia as well, now that the window for a diplomatic solution appears to be closing rapidly.

Through it all, though, we have Vladimir Putin not giving a damn about what all this means to his people, to his standing among world leaders or to his legacy. He’s a bad dude to be sure.

Putin’s history of evil intent is clear, as he once led the Soviet spy agency, the KGB, during the Cold War. Thus, reports that he plans to enact some sort of “ethnic cleansing” in Ukraine if his troops take over the country should not surprise anyone.

I know there isn’t a damn thing on Earth I can do about any of this, other than to express my extreme displeasure over the danger that this tinhorn despot is able to place on the world we all inhabit.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

International news

Who is Vlad Putin?

Just as I vowed when he got elected U.S. president that I wouldn’t link the words “President” and “Trump” consecutively, I am having similar pangs to resist using the term “president” to refer to Vladimir Putin, the goon and deep-cover spy who runs Russia.

Vladimir Putin is a thug. He is a killer. He once ran the KGB, the Soviet Union’s spy agency. He’s a bad dude. As in really, really bad, man.

Yeah, he has been elected president. Do you believe those elections were as free and fair as those we conduct in this country? Hell, no! Putin has rewritten the rules to in effect make himself a lifetime leader.

His “rigging” of elections in Russia makes me wonder something about his best American pal, Donald J. Trump. Why hasn’t Trump bellowed and blustered about how the Russians rig their elections, rather than denigrating the U.S. electoral system? If the ex-Liar in Chief wants an example of corrupt elections, he needs to focus his fire on how the Russians keep electing Putin. Oh, wait. Trump wanted to become friends with Putin, and he cannot be Vlad’s BFF by criticizing the system that keeps returning him to power in the Kremlin.

I believe I’ll keep resisting using the term “president” to refer to the Russian leader. “President” is a title I reserve for legitimately elected leaders or leaders who don’t bring shame and disgust to their high office. Donald Trump fits the latter description to a “t” and there’s nothing legit about how Vladimir Putin attained the office he now occupies.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

 

International news

Russians have pals … on the right!

OK, let me see if I have this correct. The Republican Party that once vilified Russians as being part of an Evil Empire, whose president once muttered into an open mic that he would launch missiles at the Soviet Union in “five minutes,” and who kept their grip on power by refusing to give the enemy any quarter is now in bed with the latest Russian dictator.

GOP members of Congress along with their friends in the right-wing media are criticizing President Biden’s actions against the Russians, contending that Ukraine is the real villain in the growing crisis in Europe.

Presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Bush 41 are spinning in their graves at this moment.

We are hearing next to nothing from the right-wingers among us criticizing the actions of Vladimir Putin, who is threatening all-out war against Ukraine. The nut jobs on the right instead are criticizing the Democratic U.S. president for, um, threatening to levy stiff, punishing sanctions on Russians if they launch an invasion of Ukraine.

Those of us who remember the Cold War also remember a time when GOP politicians took great pride in standing firm against tyrants such as those who ruled the Soviet Union, which later returned to just being ol’ Russia after the collapse of communism in the early 1990s. Yes, some of expressed hope then that Russia would follow the model set by the United States and many nations in western Europe. Alas, it didn’t happen. We are dealing now with yet another strongman in the form of Putin, who has declared that the fall of the USSR was his country’s darkest historic moment.

What in the world am I missing here?

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

International news

Putin = madness

(AP Photo/Martin Meissner)

Vladimir Putin is insane. That’s the only “diagnosis” I can offer while watching the Russian strongman flirt with going to war with another sovereign nation for reasons I cannot begin to understand.

As I write these words, Putin’s armed forces are staging and preparing — we are led to believe — to invade Ukraine. Putin wants some sort of assurance that Ukraine will never be allowed to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a pact of nations formed to deter the former Soviet Union from going to war with the rest of Europe.

The Soviet Union no longer exists. The Russian Federation took its place and now Putin is rattling his sabers and seeking to conquer Ukraine, which used to be a “republic” as part of the old USSR.

One thing has changed, and it’s a big one. Ukraine is now a sovereign nation. Just like Russia. Just like all the former Soviet republics. Russia surrendered control over those nations in 1991 when the Soviet Union dissolved. I am having difficulty understanding what is going through Putin’s sinister mind.

How in the name of international law can this lunatic justify invading Ukraine? How can Putin explain to Russians that they’re going to pay for the strongman’s desire to re-take control of a nation that now has its own president and its own economy?

Yes, the Russians are going to suffer grievously if Putin sends in the tanks and the troops. President Biden vows swift and destructive sanctions if the Russians invade Ukraine. So, there’s that. Also, Ukraine is not defenseless. Ukrainian armed forces are prepared to inflict horrible damage on the invading forces; get ready to welcome the caskets home, Vlad Putin.

Oh, and then there is the fallout that the nations of the world will shower all over Russia if it inflicts serious damage to Ukraine’s civilian population.

Vladimir Putin doesn’t care about any of it?

The Russian goon is out of his mind.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

 

International news

Mitt was right about Russia

My sense of fair play compels me to offer an apology to 2012 Republican Party presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who once made a declaration that drew scorn from those of us who opposed his election to the presidency.

Romney, now the junior U.S. senator from Utah, declared during that campaign that Russia posed “the greatest geopolitical threat” to the United States. Do you recall the howls of derision from Democrats and others on the left? Why, how could Romney be so, um, naive? So out of touch? So, so … wrong?

Greater threats seemed at the time to lie in places like the Middle East, among terrorist groups intent on destroying “the Great Satan.” So, we laughed off Mitt Romney’s absurd notion about Russia.

Now, though, he seems prescient. Russia has emerged as a profound threat to the entire world. Certainly to neighboring countries, such as, oh, Ukraine and Belarus. And Georgia. And the Baltic States.

The Russians are engaging in cyber warfare against the rest of the world. They interfered in our 2016 presidential election, sought to do it again in 2020. They might try yet again in 2024.

Donald Trump, the president who received help from the Russians in ’16, stood next to Russian killer Vladimir Putin and endorsed his denial that the Russian interfered in our election. He and Putin became BFFs. Putin played Trump like a fiddle.

Mitt was right about Russia. I won’t cry myself to sleep over being wrong in 2012. I just want to acknowledge that Romney told us the truth when he ran for POTUS but a lot of us weren’t yet ready to hear it.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

International news

Stand-down possible?

The more I think about a notion I floated the other day about the Russia-Ukraine crisis, the less goofy it is sounding to me as I roll it around my noggin.

I tossed the idea out there that President Biden might be inflating the imminent danger of a Russian invasion of Ukraine as a way to boost his sagging public opinion poll numbers. In other words, the door to a diplomatic solution might be closer than we are being led to believe it is.

Now we’re getting reports from Paris, Moscow, Kyiv and Washington that diplomatic pressure is mounting against Russian strongman/goon Vladimir Putin. The pressure is reiterating a message President Biden delivered to him during their hour-long phone conversation over this past weekend, that any attack by Russian armed forces against Ukraine would bring swift and destructive economic actions against the Russians.

Putin just might be listening to what he’s being told and — this is still a stretch, I know — might be willing to flinch at the thought of subjecting his people to untold economic suffering.

Putin is a former spy. He also is now a politician. Putin must know that a politician cannot subject his constituents to avoidable misery.

We have plenty of diplomatic leverage we can use against the Russian thug.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

International news

Putin has it right, strange as that seems

Leave it to Russian strongman/dictator/killer Vladimir Putin to put our Afghan War effort into some sort of semi-reasonable and rational perspective.

“The result is one tragedy, one loss… American troops were present in this region, and for twenty years they tried to civilize people, and to introduce their own norms and standards of life in the broadest sense… including in the political organization of society,” Putin said. “The result is zero, if not to say that it is negative.”

He should know. Putin was a big-time spymaster while Russia was known as the Soviet Union, and during the time the Soviet Union sent troops into Afghanistan to seek to defeat those who opposed the Marxist regime that ran the country in the1980s.

Putin: U.S. Has Nothing, “Zilch” To Show For 20 Years Of Occupation Of Afghanistan | Video | RealClearPolitics

The communists fared no better than our forces did during the 20 years Americans fought there.

Which to my way of thinking tells me that President Biden made the right call when he ended our military engagement.

Hmm. Imagine that. President Biden and Vlad Putin agreeing on something. Who knew?

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Trumpkins hang tough … astounding!

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I must admit to a certain astonishment as I watch Donald Trump seek re-election as president of the United States.

It comes as I watch those members of the Trumpkin Corps continue to make excuses for their candidate’s astounding behavior. I admit to watching Trump at those rallies he stages and am shocked and amazed at how little substance he offers. Indeed, his rants and riffs are bereft of any policy initiatives.

He prances and preens in front of those adoring fans of his as if he’s a TV star … oh, wait! I forgot that he once was one once upon a time. He mocks Joe Biden because the former vice president chooses to wear a mask while speaking in public. Hey, we do have a pandemic among us that is still killing Americans by the hundreds every day.

Trump gripes about the news coverage he gets. He has taken aim at the moderator of the next “debate” scheduled for later this week with Biden, NBC reporter Kristen Welker.

Trump continues to deploy his Twitter account relentlessly, ad nauseum.

And still … the Trumpkins out there think he’s just the bee’s knees, the greatest thing since pockets on shirts, the alleged “messiah,” the guy who “tells it like it is.”

They ignore the president’s failure to respond initially to the COVID-19 pandemic. They dismiss Trump’s unwillingness to challenge Russian loon Vladimir Putin for placing bounties on our American fighting men and women and paying real money to Taliban terrorists for killing them on the battlefield. They ignore his un-Christian behavior at every turn yet some of them keep suggesting that God dispatched Trump onto the campaign trail in 2016 to save the nation.

This individual has created a cult of personality the likes of which I have never seen in this great nation of ours. He cuddles (proverbially) with murderous dictators and denigrates our own intelligence professionals. Trump recently said FBI director Christopher Wray “isn’t doing a very good job” because Wray says white supremacists pose an existential threat to this nation. He challenges the expert advice given him and the nation by the world’s pre-eminent infectious disease guru, Dr. Anthony Fauci, who – for the life of me I don’t understand this – continues to serve at the pleasure of this goofball.

Through it all Trump sways the faithful who just cannot bring themselves to acknowledge what the rest of us have seen all along. It is that their guy is as phony as they come.

International news

May Day celebration … in Russia, Mr. POTUS? Really?

Vladimir Putin has extended an invitation to Donald Trump. The Russian president wants the U.S. president to attend a May 9, 2020 event commemorating the 75th year since the end of World War II fighting in Europe.

Trump is considering whether to attend. He calls the anniversary of the Allied victory a “very big deal.” He also noted the event occurs in the middle of a presidential campaign, in which he will be a principal participant.

Oh, the quandary.

Normally I would suggest the president go to Russia to help our World War II allies celebrate the end of European combat during that terrible conflict.

Except, consider this:

  • The president is likely to be impeached because he sought a political favor from Ukraine in exchange for weapons that are slated to go to Ukraine, which is battling rebels backed by Russia. He held up the weapons that would be used against an aggressor sponsored by Russians.
  •  Russia attacked our electoral system in 2016 and is doing so in advance of the 2020 election. That’s the view of our nation’s intelligence network, which Trump has dismissed and disparaged.
  •  Russians are involved in the fighting in Syria. Trump has pulled out our forces from that region, putting our Kurdish allies in jeopardy, exposing them to potential harm by Russian-backed Syrian forces.

So, with all of that as a backdrop, Donald Trump might travel to Moscow to help the Russians cheer their role in defeating the Nazis. He’ll watch the Russians display their military hardware, which is one of the usual features of their May Day ceremony.

Yes, the Russians will show off equipment similar to what they are deploying in their fight with Ukraine, which has become entangled in a U.S. political fight that is likely to result in a presidential impeachment.

Oh, and the Russians are in the midst of launching yet another attack on our electoral system.

Let me think: Should the president go to Russia to applaud the Russians’ May Day celebration? Umm. No. He shouldn’t.