Tag Archives: Russia

International news, military news

Hoping for sanity in Kremlin

If you’ll forgive me for relying on my sometimes-wrong trick knee, but I am going to say that the ol’ knee’s throbbing is telling me there will be no land war in Europe.

Russian troops have gathered along their country’s border with Ukraine. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has been negotiating his brains out with his Russian counterpart, foreign minister Sergie Lavrov, over ways to forgo an armed conflict.

There will be sufficient economic sanctions coming from the United States and the rest of NATO in response to a Russian attack on Ukraine, if it comes.

I am going to hold out hope that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin is going to think better of his temptation to invade Ukraine. He knows that his country is a third-rate economic power fueled almost exclusively by oil. He knows, too, that European NATO forces are not going to war with Russia. Neither will the United States, nor should we enter a land war with Russian forces.

President Biden has walked back the gaffe he uttered at his press conference this past week, suggesting that a mere “incursion” wouldn’t provoke a severe response. There isn’t a damn bit of difference between an incursion and an invasion. Biden must treat them the same way. Yes, U.S. staff levels in Ukraine have been reduced in anticipation of some military action. It is better to be prepared for the worst.

Don’t let me down, trick knee

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Uncategorized

Incursion = invasion

How about we cease the rhetorical pussyfooting regarding whether a nation stages an “incursion” into another nation’s territory, rather than a full-scale “invasion?”

I see no difference.

At issue is what Russian troops might be ordered to do now that they are massed along the country’s border with Ukraine. We hear about the 100,000 armed forces who reportedly are staging for some sort of military action against Ukraine forces on the other side of the border.

President Biden seemed to suggest that a mere “incursion” would result in a less-severe reaction from the United States than an invasion.

This is nonsense. I wish the president would cease seeking to make a distinction between the actions.

The first time I remember hearing the term “incursion” was in 1970 when U.S. troops moved into Cambodia during the Vietnam War. I had just returned from that conflict, and I was horrified then at the thought of our troops marching into another country to wage battle against Viet Cong and North Vietnamese military forces.

My dog-eared American Heritage Dictionary defines incursion as “a raid or an invasion.” I guess, therefore, that the terms are interchangeable.

Whatever our response is to what the Russians do shouldn’t depend on the nature or the scope of their military action against another sovereign nation. My hope is that Joe Biden will establish that whatever economic sanction we level against Russia will be severe … no matter the level of the Russians’ military action.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Joe Biden

Give Putin the dickens, Mr. POTUS

3 Comments

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Vladimir Putin is in dire need of a stern lecture from the leader of the world’s remaining military superpower.

The Russian strongman is preparing no doubt for a summit meeting with President Biden, who has just commenced his first foreign trip as our commander in chief.

Biden has said in public that he plans to bring up at least three critical issues that his immediate predecessor, Donald Trump, didn’t bother to broach with his strongman pal.

They include: interference in our elections, human rights concerns, the paying of bounties to Taliban terrorists who kill American service personnel on the Afghanistan battlefield.

President Biden has known Putin for many years, owing to his two terms as vice president and his time as a U.S. senator. He told Putin once that he looked into the Russian’s eyes and “did not see a soul,” which Putin reportedly responded that the men understood each other.

Whereas Trump coddled dictators, President Biden has expressed an intention to take an entirely different approach in dealing with Putin. Joe Biden now gets his chance to demonstrate that he means business and that he will make Putin answer for the behavior he has sanctioned while governing Russia.

My hope for Joe Biden is that he deals with Putin as the leader of the world’s most powerful and indispensable nation and that Putin no longer can act as though Russia is our equal. It isn’t.

national news, political news

Biden needs to be held to his own campaign pledges

(Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)

Joseph R. Biden Jr. is making his share of campaign promises as he seeks to unseat Donald J. Trump Sr. from the presidency.

I am extremely cautious in my hope that he’ll be able to fulfill them. I man, Trump does have a way of pulling rabbits out of his hat … if not his a**. He could do so again down the stretch toward Election Day.

Biden is making some promises that I want to see him keep. For example:

He vows to improve the Affordable Care Act, not scrap it; he vows to rescind Trump executive orders removing us from the Paris Climate Accords and the Iranian nuclear arms deal; Biden promises to work closely with our worldwide allies and cease scolding them; he pledges to hold Russia accountable for the attacks it has launched on our political system and to force answers on the issue of paying bounties for the combat deaths of American service personnel; he vows an energy policy that stresses “clean” sources of energy.

Biden wants to restore our nation’s “soul.” I’m all in. Our soul has been co-opted by the fraud who occupies the Oval Office. Biden vows to lead the entire nation, not just the base that is most loyal to him … which is a promise we never have heard from Donald Trump.

Once the dust settles and Biden — or so I am hoping — is elected the nation’s 46th president, I am going to insist that the new guy keep faith with the myriad pledges he has made.

I am acutely aware that I won’t be alone in that effort. Good. The more of us the better … for the nation.

national news

DJT: Hardly the master of impeccable timing

Talk about bad timing, bad optics, bad messaging.

On the very day that U.S. House of Representatives Democrats reveal articles of impeachment against him, Donald John Trump decides to welcome Russian foreign ministry officials into the White House.

Bad timing, optics and messaging?

Well, consider that the president is being impeached by the House over his withholding of military aid to Ukraine, which is fighting rebels backed by — get ready for it — those nasty Russians! He withheld the aid in exchange for a political favor he sought from Ukraine, asking them to announce an investigation into alleged wrongdoing by Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.

So what does the president do when the impeachment articles are announced? He invites Russian diplomats who work for a government is benefiting materially from the very action for which the House is impeaching him.

Remember, too, that he brought these clowns into the Oval Office in 2017 the day after he fired FBI Director James Comey who, not coincidentally, was investigating the “Russia thing.”

It makes my head spin.

International news, political news

What has happened to those ‘mainstream Republicans’?

As I watch congressional Republicans and other GOP members around the country seek to defend Donald Trump against the impeachable offenses that have been alleged against him, I am struck by a curious notion.

What in the world has happened to supposed adherents to a political philosophy/ideology that seems so terribly at odds with what has become the centerpiece of the impeachment effort against the president?

Donald Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for a “favor, though.” He wanted Zelenskiy to announce an investigation into Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, before getting a White House meeting. He also held up military assistance appropriated by Congress for Ukraine to use against Russian-backed aggressors in Ukraine.

The Ukrainians are our allies. The Russians are not. And yet, Trump sought to pursue a posture that would benefit the Russians. What in the world … ? Moreover, by seeking dirt on a potential foe from a foreign government, the president of the United States is seeking another government to help him win another election.

Mainstream Republicans used to take great umbrage at any sort of softening of U.S. policy regarding the Russians and their ideological forebears, the communists who formed the Soviet Union after World War I. These days, we have an ostensibly Republican president currying favor with and kowtowing to Russian strongmen and oligarchs. Indeed, the Ukrainian initiative — the withholding of arms to fight Russian-backed rebels — looks for all the world to be yet another example of Trump licking the jackboots of the Russian thugs who run that once-great superpower.

All the while, Republicans in the House and Senate do or say virtually nothing that the president can interpret as stern criticism of this hideous policy. They remain complicit in the president’s violation of the oath he took to defend and protect the Constitution. They look and sound ready to stand by their man even as he continues the hijacking of their once-great political party, twisting and turning into something unrecognizable from the days when the GOP stood for national strength and resolve against an enemy of this nation.

I’ve said repeatedly that Donald Trump has disgraced the nation with his conduct. So, too, have his political allies who once stood strongly in favor of the very values that the president is flouting.

national news

POTUS becomes Russian disinformation mouthpiece … unbelievable!

It wasn’t enough that Donald Trump stood next to Vladimir Putin in Helsinki and said he believed Putin’s denial of Russian interference in our 2016 electoral system.

Oh, no. Nor was it enough that he denigrated our intelligence network’s assertion that the Russians did what was alleged.

Now he has adopted the Russian lyric that Ukraine played a major role in the 2016 election hack. He is helping the Russia propaganda machine spread the lie that the U.S. intelligence experts have debunked.

The director of national intelligence, the CIA, the FBI, the National Security Agency, the Treasury Department, the Joint Chiefs of Staff … they all say the same thing. The Russians did it!

And yet the president of the United States continues to double down on the lie being pushed by the Russians and endorsed by congressional Republicans who are dissing Ukraine as part of their strategy to defend the president against the impeachment wave that is swelling in the House of Representatives.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are witnessing an astonishing act of political malfeasance by the president.

He is defending the Russian strongman/president yet again critics here at home who view the Russians as an existential threat to the integrity of our electoral system. The Russians have embarked on a campaign to do to the 2020 election what they did in 2016.

Former special counsel Robert Mueller III told us this past summer that the Russians are mobilizing their election interference machine at this moment. He endorsed fully the intelligence community’s assessment that the Russians pose the threat to our democratic electoral system.

Donald Trump took an oath to protect our system against such an outright attack. He has forsaken that oath for personal political gain.

Shameful.

International news

Correcting small part of ‘the record’

I have been called out.

The release of a document chronicling a phone call between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskiy is not a “transcript.” It is a memo, the contents of which are taken from a transcript of the phone call.

A social media friend mentioned it to me in response to a blog item I published in which I referred to the document as a “transcript.”

That’s my bad.

The recognition does lend credence to the view that the memo requires release of the full unredacted transcript and the whistleblower’s report that blew this case wide open.

At issue is whether Trump asked the Ukrainian president, Zelenskiy, for information regarding Joe Biden and his son, Hunter. Trump appears to be seeking this information to use as a weapon against Joe Biden, who is a potential political opponent.

There you have it. The president allegedly used the immense power of his office to obtain ammunition to use against a political foe. He allegedly withheld military aid money for Ukraine if or until Zelenskiy produced the information requested.

The two men’s phone chat has been reported extensively throughout the day. However, we didn’t get the “transcript.” We got a memo describing the phone call, complete with ellipses that keep perhaps important segments of that phone call from full public view.

The impeachment saga continues to gather steam.

 

national news

Trump shows his self-punishment gluttony

1 Comment

Donald Trump surely must be a glutton for punishment.

He has left the G7 meeting in France and now wants to play host to the next summit of the world’s economic powers at his Florida resort at Doral.

Can you say “Emoluments Clause,” anyone? Anyone?

That’s the part of the U.S. Constitution that makes it illegal for presidents of the United States to profit from their public service. You know, taking gifts from the foreign heads of state, kings, princes and potentates. That kind of thing.

So why is Trump pitching this idea of playing host to G7 powers at his glitzy estates? He still owns the place. He is still earning a substantial living from it. He didn’t divest his financial interests after taking office as president.

I don’t get this one single bit.

Trump kept delivering impromptu infomercials to his fellow G7 participants.

Then there’s this: He wants Russian strongman Vladimir Putin to attend the next G7 summit. Yep, Russia. The country got booted out of the G7 because of its aggression against Ukraine. The member nations made the call.

Yet the dictator’s BFF, Donald Trump, wants to give him a pass. Bring him back, says Trump. Let’s make the G7 the G8, even though Russia is a third-rate economic power.

Trump is inviting more trouble for himself.

Unbelievable.

International news, national news

Russia needs to change its ways, Mr. President

Mr. President, I know you’re busy hobnobbing with world leaders at the G7 summit, but bear with me for a moment or two.

You’re insistence that Russia be brought back into the group of leading industrialized nations misses at least a couple of  fundamental points.

First, the entire coalition of nations kicked Russia out of its ranks because of Vladimir Putin’s interference in Ukrainian affairs. It was President Obama’s deal; Obama wasn’t “outsmarted” by Putin or anyone else.

Yet you keep blaming your immediate predecessor for matters over which he had little actual singular impact. Knock that off, Mr. President.

Second, Russia is a third-rate industrial and economic power. It can barely feed its people. Several U.S. states produced more Gross Domestic Product than Russia. I’d bet real money that Texas, California, New York and Florida all outperform the Russian economy.

The G7 comprises economic powerhouses, Mr. President. Russia ain’t there. It’s a struggling Third World nation with admittedly lots of nuclear weapons held over from the Soviet days and the Cold War the USSR lost when it competed against the United States.

Why did the Soviet Union collapse? I’ll tell you why. It collapsed because the communists were spent. They ran out of gas. They couldn’t compete any longer with the West, the United States, with anyone. It faded into oblivion and left behind a corrupt, crime-ridden government that sought to create some form of “democratic” rule, but has devolved into the authoritarian system you seem to admire.

And why in the world do you want to be partners with a nation that attacked our electoral system in 2016? Oh, wait! I almost forgot! Putin said he didn’t do it and you believe him over the word of our crack intelligence team that says the Russians attacked us with the aim of getting you elected president.

Russia doesn’t deserve to be a part of any sort of coalition of industrialized powers. Not until it actually becomes one.

And for crying out loud, Mr. President, not until you finally, if ever, condemn the Russians for attacking the system of government you swore you would protect.

Your kowtowing to the Russians makes me sick.

Then again, so do you!