Posts Tagged ‘Ukraine’

A DO NOTHING PRESIDENT

Posted: December 7, 2019 in News and politics
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Volodymyr Zelensky has one job as far as the people who voted for him are concerned is to end the war going on with Russia in the Donbas area of Ukraine! So he cannot demean Putin as he will be meeting with him on this issue shortly. On the other side of the coin, he needs the U.S. President to be his partner, his support system, and needs his backing with the might and support he needs to make a case to Putin that he, Zelensky, has the resources to negotiate from strength! 

Now, regardless of how you feel about hearings on impeachment going on, two things stand out! Trump is not interested in helping Ukraine. He is playing them as the bad guys in our last election instead of Russia despite all the reports from his intelligence agencies telling him just the opposite. Trump held up support, which Ukraine needed to supply the strongholds in the Donbas area who are attempting to fight off the Russian aggression in their country. Why he did, that seems evident to me, but I do not want to debate that right now. My point is that Ukraine is key to our influence in Eastern Europe. Not supporting Zelensky in his efforts to resist Putin is a direct attack on our security in the region as well as our NATO allies! In an interview with Time and three European outlets, Zelensky went the farthest he has gone in stating his disappointment with Trump. “We’re at war. If you’re our strategic partner, then you can’t go blocking anything for us,” he said, referring to the three hundred and twenty million dollars in aid that Trump ordered frozen in July. “I think that’s just about fairness. It’s not about a quid pro quo. It just goes without saying.”

But Trump continues to bad-mouth NATO, Ukraine, and individual leaders of NATO countries. Instead of making NATO even more effective, he is threatening to pull support from that organization. 

Trump repeatedly sides with Putin over U.S. intelligence agencies. He rejects U.S. intelligence he finds inconvenient! This happens all the time according to people that work or have worked for Trump. One prime example is he cannot except that he won the Presidential election with the help of Russia and did not win the popular vote. So even though all of the U.S. intelligence agencies assured Trump that Russia did influence the election in a very robust campaign that favored him, he rejected their assessment. So now, even though there is absolutely no evidence to support the claim, he is saying that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that is responsible for the election interference and that it favored Hillary, not him. He further claims that the Ukraine intervention and millions of illegal aliens voting was why he did not win the popular vote. Which an investigation he asked for found no such evidence existed. So he is a do-nothing President when it comes to our security, even to the point of saying out loud in public that Putin told him what was true and real, and that is what he believes over U.S. agency reports! His answer to our security is touting a nuclear build up and how much power he has! He admires the totalitarian stereotype and wants them to know he is the top strongman! 

Leaders in the world are now mocking Trump in public, and they are not waiting on America to move forward with NATO, Climate Change, and any world problems that take cooperation between nations!

One last point! Trump is adamant that he did not ask for help or use his influence to get dirt on Vice President Biden or his son! But right now, as I write this, Rudy Giuliani is back in Ukraine actively still trying to do just that! The very thing that Trump has already been accused of! But Trump knows he will never be held accountable by a GOP controlled Senate! So he does not care to curtail anything he thinks will help him win! He is and always has been corrupt in his personal life before and after his political career started! The facts about this are not even in being denied! His career should have been over with the P—- tape. Or when he impersonated a physically disabled individual! Or when it became clear he paid off porn stars! Or when a minimum of 17 women came forward to accused Trump of sexual assault! That should have ended any bid for the office of President! I usually end my blogs and other offerings with this question, “Do you get it now!” But I must admit, I don’t get it! I cannot fathom how anyone thinks this man should be the representative of our country to the world! He made a big deal out of the fact that he would be to busy to play golf and that he would donate his salary. So far, Trump has spent 115 million of our dollars on golf, which amounts to 287 years of his salary, you add it up! 

By John Love

The Love Chronicles

The Love Chronicles: Just Some Thoughts

Posted: March 8, 2014 in News and politics
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Just Some Thoughts

I know, OMG, right? I will try and refrain from politics and just try for some history, geography, and of course, some basic editorializing by yours truly. Hey, it’s my blog! Just been thinking about the human condition and trying to understand it.

Let’s start with Ukraine and the Crimea since it is in the news right now. I have been checking news reports from Crimea itself, most of the people there, as far as I can tell, are of ethnic Russian descent and feel like they are not treated the same as most of Ukraine’s citizenry. Now if you look at Crimea, basically it is a peninsula, connected to the main part of the country by a fairly narrow strip of land. The Crimea has always been an area of contention; today’s problems are actually old hat.

Way back in the 13th century Crimea was the capital of the Golden Horde. Under the protection of the Ottoman Empire for about 300 years until Catherine the Great snatched it up in 1783. As you will see if you peruse the maps I have included, you will see that all of Ukraine has been passed around like vodka at a toga party. You will notice also that Ukraine shares a common border with Russia, and that it has changed in size and shape several times. During world wars it seemed to change owners much like a used car with bad brakes. So changing various political entities and countries have claimed the Ukraine and it’s peninsula off and on throughout history, leaving their stamp on the population.  This in turn has caused confusion about who it is and what it stands for.  This is my uneducated opinion of course, but I think accurate.

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So not surprising that since Ukraine was a Soviet Socialist Republic until 1991 that this is still a pebble in the shoe of Mr. Putin, who is old school and used to be KGB right up to 1991 when it was still the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. Wow, that was a mouthful! Hard to type too! Vladimir also has control issues, just look at him strut when he walks, and has to broadcast himself kicking some protagonists butt in a personal defense demonstration. If you poll Russians on who they voted for, you cannot get a lot of response, but out of the response you do get, very few people seemed to have voted for Vlad, but he still wins with comfortable majorities, go figure.

So what should we do? Well whatever we do it should not be trying to play the blame game. As I have stated, I think the President is weak when it comes to foreign policy, but part of that problem is our congress and president not speaking with one voice when it is critical that we do so. Recognizing when that needs to happen is something congress should know and do, but not this congress.

Do we have a right to interfere? That is the debate isn’t it? You see most of the demonstrators in Crimea wanting to return to Russian rule. So who are we to tell them different? Did Putin send in troops to protect ethnic Russians? I think not, my opinion is that he would like the borders of Russia to start to revert back to the way they were when it was the Soviet Union.  With the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, Crimea became part of an independent Ukraine. Crimea’s communist authorities proclaimed self-government in 1992, which ultimately led to the territory being granted expanded autonomous rights by Kiev. Just today they voted to return to Russian control, but of course that is not the way Kiev wants it. So just be aware that this author thinks that it is important not to let Putin have whatever he wants without opposition, he is a dangerous man. Better to pay attention now than later.