Tag Archives: Putin

Joe Biden, national news, political news

Let the campaign commence

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The strangest presidential campaign in my memory has begun in earnest … and the two major-party candidates haven’t even been nominated yet by their respective parties.

President Biden is running for re-election against the nimrod he defeated in 2020. For reasons that I cannot explain or understand, he is running — for the time being — as the underdog in this contest.

I don’t get it. The economy is rocking along. Americans clearly are better off than they were when he took office in January 2021. He campaigned on a pledge to restore our nation’s “soul,” and I believe he has succeeded. He’s got more work to do and in my view he has earned the right to finish the job.

But, oh my … this campaign is as weird as any I have seen in all my years watching and, in some cases, covering these events. In fact, it’s the weirdest campaign I can remember.

The Republican nominee-in-waiting is cozying up to dictators. He calls the Hungarian thug/despot a “strong leader” and sounds as if he wants to govern the United States the way his good pal governs Hungary. Oh, my God in heaven. Please … no!

He threatens to dismantle NATO, all but pledges to look the other way while Russian thug Vladimir Putin “does whatever the hell he wants” by attacking a NATO ally while he prosecutes the war in Ukraine.

All of that and more run totally counter to American ideals. Yet the dipsh** continues to lead in public opinion polling.

Are we that stupid, that ignorant, that cynical as a nation to let this guy have his way? May we all come to our senses between now and Nov. 5, when Election Day arrives.

International news, Joe Biden, national news

Partisan fight over aid to fight Russia?

You live  long enough and you’re liable to see all kinds of manifestations of principle you once thought were set in steel-enforced concrete.

Take the U.S. position regarding aggression by Russian armed forces … for example.

Russia invaded Ukraine a year-plus ago. President Biden said this country would stand foursquare against the Russian aggressors. He vowed to stitch together a strong alliance of nations to resist the Russians. He succeeded.

We have helped Ukraine turn back the Russians. Ukrainian armed forces launched a counteroffensive. You’d think the Democratic U.S. president would enjoy the support of long-standing anti-Russian pols who belong to the Republican Party. Right? Guess again, pilgrim.

We now have the MAGA crowd resisting efforts to back Ukraine … for reasons that totally escape me! It has to be that their guy, the former POTUS, thinks the sun rises and sets on Russian goon/strongman Vladimir Putin.

The MAGA cult seemingly doesn’t believe as much in democratic principles as their political forebears — the real Republicans who fought the Russians and the Soviet Union with a passion. Then again, I don’t consider the MAGA morons to be real Republicans. They are political perverts who have twisted longstanding U.S. policy into something unrecognizable.

It is an evolution I never envisioned I would see.

International news

Russians are repeating their mistakes

You’ve heard it said about those who do not learn from their mistakes, correct?

The leading aphorism comes from the Spanish philosopher George Santayana, who said: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

It looks to me as though the Russians are learning that lesson the hard way, in real time.

What we once knew as the Soviet Union decided in 1980 to invade Afghanistan, attempting to install a Kremlin-friendly regime in Kabul. The Afghans were fighting for their lives and for the future of their country and then proceeded to kick the Soviets’ backsides out of Afghanistan eight years later.

They had help from sources, such as the U.S. Congress, which appropriated money to supply the Afghan fighters with anti-aircraft missiles, which they used with stunning efficiency.

Fast-forward to early 2022. Russia decided to invade Ukraine, again to install a regime friendly to autocrats who run the Kremlin. The Ukrainians, like the Afghans before them, are fighting for their sovereignty … and are actually winning the war on the battlefield. Once again, the Ukrainians are being helped by arms coming from multiple allied nations that also are appalled at the Russians’ illegal and immoral effort to subdue a sovereign nation.

Can it possibly be that Russian strongman Vladimir Putin is too stupid to understand the wisdom of a learned Spanish thinker?

Stupid? It’s possible … along with too arrogant.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

International news

It’s no ‘territorial dispute’

Ron DeSantis has provided a grotesque misrepresentation of the war that is raging between two nations in eastern Europe.

The Florida governor and pending Republican presidential candidate calls the war between Ukraine and Russia a “territorial dispute” that does not deserve the United States’s commitment to shoring up Ukraine against the Russians.

Wow! For the record, I intend to look back briefly at what happened in February 2022.

Russia invaded Ukraine, intending to overthrow the government in Kyiv and installing a pro-Kremlin puppet to replace Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. It wasn’t a territorial dispute. It was a blatant, flagrant attempt to overthrow a sovereign government.

What has commenced is a war between democracy and autocracy.

Therefore, the United States has a compelling interest to stand beside Ukraine as it fights for its survival against forces launched by Russian strongman Vladimir Putin.

So, for DeSantis to suggest that the war is anything less than what it is — an intense ideological struggle between good and evil — is to appeal only to the MAGA base of what passes for his Republican Party.

DeSantis is demonstrating a disgusting fealty to Putin and his ham-handed view of governance.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

crime news

Put Putin on trial!

Vladimir Putin needs to be tried for war crimes against civilians in Ukraine … of that I am utterly certain.

The Russian goon/thug/strongman/despot/tyrant has stooped to even lower lows than I thought possible.

His military is now targeting heating infrastructure in Ukraine as the temperatures start to plummet to below-zero temperatures. Who suffers from such hideous attacks? Women, children, elderly people.

Russian propagandists insist they are targeting military operations. Bullsh**! Their aim is to bring the civilian population to its knees. It’s the only target left, given that the Ukrainian military machine is making mincemeat on the battlefield of what once was considered an invincible Russian army.

Putin is now turning his weaponry on civilians. Thus, he needs to stand trial. In absentia if need be.

There is plenty of precedent for putting war criminals on trial in absentia. The International Court needs to step in –and step up — to do its job by holding this Russian despot accountable for his obvious crimes against humanity.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

International news

And the war slogs on

We have been fixated – and rightly so – on gun violence and ways to reduce it, if not end it altogether. I just want to remind everyone that we have a war underway on another continent that deserves our attention as well.

Those damn Russians continue to bombard Ukrainian targets and they continue to kill Ukrainian civilians in their attempt to further the aims of the dictator who sent them into battle illegally. That would be Vladimir Putin, the despot about whom Donald J. Trump used to speak so glowingly in his effort to make nice with a known killer.

Joe Biden has all but declared Putin to be a pariah among world leaders. Which is an apt description. He has called Putin a war criminal. By my reckoning, war criminals need to be prosecuted for crimes against humanity and, if convicted, they deserve to be punished.

Does that mean Putin needs to go to prison for his crimes against Ukraine? For his targeting of hospitals, schools, churches and apartment complexes?

Well, uh, yeah! Do you think?

The Ukraine War slogs on. It continues to break my heart, which already is shattered by tragedy here at home.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

International news

Can he declare victory?

The late U.S. Sen. George Aiken, a great Republican from Vermont, once lamented that the nation could conclude the Vietnam War simply by saying: “Let’s just declare victory and go home.”

The war was going badly, even though American forces were winning on the battlefield. Our victories were overshadowed by protests at home as Americans grieved over the casualties we suffered for a mission that no one at the Pentagon was able to articulate.

Russians are facing possibly the same the dilemma. Their forces invaded Ukraine months ago. The idea was to subdue Ukraine quickly, tossing out the government led by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and installing a pro-Moscow puppet to dance to the tune called by Russian despot Vladimir Putin.

It didn’t happen.

The Ukrainians are fighting for their survival against Russians who are fighting to soothe the ego of a dictator.

Can the Russians now just “declare victory” the way Sen. Aiken saw many decades ago? It’s all right with me.

I want the bloodshed to end. I am sickened by the destruction brought to Ukraine. I am heartened, though, by the courage that Ukrainians are demonstrating — under Zelenskyy’s leadership — in fending off the invaders.

As for Putin’s possible victory declaration, I want to stipulate that none of that would preclude an international trial on charges of war crimes being leveled against this monstrous tyrant. By any measure one can make that charge against Putin, given that his forces have struck soft targets — schools, hospitals and apartment complexes — in direct violation of the Geneva Accords meant to govern the rules of war.

Let the bastard declare victory and then then commence a trial to convict him of crimes against humanity.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

International news

War with NATO? Seriously?

Now we are hearing reports that Russian madman Vladimir Putin is telling his people they should prepare for war against the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which makes me believe more than ever that Vlad has a screw loose in that spook’s brain.

I cannot think of a worse outcome for Putin’s illegal, unprovoked invasion of Ukraine than for him to send missiles into NATO countries bordering the Russian frontier.

We have this “thing” called Article V, which states that an attack against one NATO nation is an attack on all of them. All of them includes the United States of America.

To be clear, President Biden has said he will do everything within his immense power as U.S. commander in chief to keep our fighting men and women off the battlefield against Russia. I believe the president.

Putin, though, has far more to worry about than just the U.S. presence among NATO’s alliance of nations. The combined NATO military force constitutes an overpowering adversary. Does the Russian madman really intend to wage war against NATO? I want to believe the answer is no.

These chilling reports from Moscow, though, give me cause to think Putin really is mad.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

International news, military news

Ukrainians fight back

Fox News’s Stuart Varney has a theory about why Russian soldiers are bogging down in their advance on Kyiv. It has to do with Ukrainian citizens taking up arms and killing the invaders with grenades, rockets and assorted high-tech weaponry.

Varney notes that the Russians are poorly trained and have “low morale” among the troops.

You know, it sort of reminds of me another military action many decades ago.

In 1941, not long after they conquered Greece during World War II, Nazi Germany decided to invade the Greek island of Crete in the world’s first airborne assault operation. Paratroopers bailed out of aircraft and landed by the thousands on Crete.

They were met by rampaging Greek citizens who stormed onto the landing fields with shovels, pitchforks, rifles and pistols and slaughtered many of the invaders; in some instances, they beat the paratroopers to death with their bare hands. The Greeks couldn’t stave off the invaders over time, but they fought literally like their lives depended on their success.

This is the kind of reaction Russian thug Vladimir Putin should have anticipated as he launched his unprovoked and shameful assault on Ukraine. For all I know, maybe he did anticipate stern resistance, but placed too much faith in his troops’ ability to subdue the Ukrainians.

Well, you know what they say when one assumes too much.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

International news

Zelenskyy assumes key role

Volodymyr Zelenskyy is putting his acting talent to good use as he stands before the world and plays the part of a real-life hero to the people he is defending against the Russian attackers.

I have no qualms about the role Zelenskyy has assumed for himself.

The Ukrainian president has assumed the role of wartime leader and head of state. Russian forces invaded his country for purposes that remain somewhat murky. I believe I can figure out what Vladimir Putin has in mind: He wants to take Ukraine over, returning to a sort of de facto Russian state.

Meanwhile, while the Russian despot’s standing plummets around the world, his adversary in Ukraine sees his standing skyrocket partly because he young Ukrainian president has enough show biz in him to play the role he appears destined to play: of an emerging leader and star on the world political stage.

Let me be crystal clear. I do not hold anything against Zelenskyy as he seeks to build worldwide public support for the cause he has taken up, which is to defend his nation against an aggressor state and a dictator with delusions of godhood.

There is little I can do from my far-away perch in North Texas.

I happen to believe in the power of prayer, so I will offer plenty of prayer to the young Ukrainian leader.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com