If Ukraine Attempts to Use Its Law Enforcement Forces to Restore Order in Crimea, Russians Will Invade: They Did the Same Thing in Georgia/South Osettia War

If we’ve learned anything from recent history, it’s that Russia will not tolerate threats to ethnic Russian populations in any neighboring countries.  They invaded Georgia  in 2008 to stop the Georgians from cracking down on South Ossetians who had declared independence from Georgia and were calling for annexation to Russia.   That’s why I think the Russian Army will attack Ukraine.

With Ukraine coming apart, and the ethnic Russians in the eastern part of the country taking paramilitary action, Russia began maneuvers with a 150,000 man army in the region, and sent its military aircraft to threaten Ukraine’s borders.  They’re also protecting Ukraine’s former president.
 
Now that the Olympics are over, there’s nothing to stop Russia from going after Ukraine, in whole or part, should the Ukraine attempt to use force to retake their government buildings in the Crimea and bring the ethnic Russians back into line.  That’s exactly what the Ukrainians must do, and what Russia is waiting for them TO do. 

This is not going to go well for the Ukraine.   How far the Russians would take a military confrontation is unclear, but they’d love to have the entire country under their control again, and not just the eastern Ukraine.   They’d also love to reclaim the rest of the Black Sea fleet, which was divided between Russia and Ukraine.

The Russians have everything to gain and the Ukrainians everything to lose.

Un-backed Virtual Currencies Are Far Too Risky to Invest In: Fly-by-Night Exchanges Like Mt.Gox Come and Go on Slightest Vague Problem

One of the largest bitcoin exchanges got virtually robbed, and $400 million of their virtual money is gone, making the company insolvent.  MtGox is under investigation by American and Japanese agencies over the $400 million theft.

In an age where many companies are unable to secure their own servers due to cost, ignorance, or lack of care, why is everyone surprised that hackers managed to get into an online company to steal online money?   Investigators are saying that those who lost money are going to be out of luck.

What in the world is a bitcoin anyways?  From the first paragraph of the Wikipedia entry for it: “ Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer payment system and digital currency introduced as open source software in 2009 by pseudonymous developer Satoshi Nakamoto. It is a cryptocurrency, so-called because it uses cryptography to control the creation and transfer of money.^[5] Conventionally, the capitalized word "Bitcoin" refers to the technology and network, whereas lowercase "bitcoins" refers to the currency itself.^[6] “

In other words, people pay real money for a certain number of bitcoins.  At today’s exchange rate, one bitcoin is worth $558.00  The currency sharply devalued after the MtGox exchange was robbed of roughly $400 million in bitcoin currency a few days ago.

I don’t trust online-only currency that is not backed by full faith and credit of a sovereign government and in widespread use.    Seems like “buyer beware” is the word of the day when it comes to deciding whether or not to invest in this kind of currency.

Piers Morgan to End CNN Show: Americans Didn’t Like Non-Citizen Preaching to Them About Gun Control

It was announced that Piers Morgan and CNN will end his talk show, which is not a bad thing.

It’s bad enough that American  politicians of both stripes and their supporters are doing their part to shred parts of the Constitution that they don’t like, but when it came to a foreign reporter preaching to the American public about gun control, it was too much for many Americans to take.

No disrespect to the British, but we can handle our own debates in our own country, in the same way that you British folks can handle your own affairs without our input.  Piers Morgan went too far and it backfired on CNN in the form of declining ratings and revenue.  His condescending attitude didn’t help his cause either.

This is a smart move on the part of CNN.

If Karzai Won’t Sign the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), U.S. Should Zero Out All U.S. Forces No Later Than January 1st, 2015

Enough with Afghan President Karzai already.   His continued belligerence toward international forces and his refusal to sign agreements with the international community should lead to an immediate pull-out of all U.S. forces, to be completed no later than January 1st, 2015.

2,169 U.S. troops have died on behalf of the Afghan ingrate and not another soldier should be asked to fight there if Afghanistan doesn’t pull its head out of the sand and start to deal with these issues, and for the Afghan president to get his rotten attitude under control.

I know U.S. forces want to remain there to finish the job, but our own President isn’t committed to victory, and neither is the Afghan president.  Our military needs time to address the needs of its soldiers, to retool and rebuild.  They’ve been at war for a long time, the longest war in U.S. history, and those troops should come home.

Afghanistan should be allowed to revert back to tribal kingdoms as it was before the imperial powers got in there.  It’s a failed state in its current form, and no Western army will change that by force of arms.

Mid-January to Mid-February Notes

Need to do something for in-between times, when I’m working on stuff but am not ready to publish yet.  Thoughts:

--With all the trouble in the Ukraine, how long can it be before Russia invades, under the guise of “restoring order?”  Anyone remember the war that they had with Georgia a while over South Ossetia?   Once the Winter Olympics are over, I think there will be a Russian intervention, with Putin daring the West to try and stop him.

--With the kickoff of the Olympics, Russian TV commentators are behaving quite badly toward American Olympic athletes.  They’re doing a fine job of humiliating themselves.   In addition, anti-FBI and CIA propaganda has started appearing in Sochi businesses.

--Cossacks are helping to secure the Winter Olympics at Sochi.   I didn’t think the Cossacks were Putin supporters.   There’s a possibility of increased tension between the Russians and the Cossacks after the Olympics and possibly clashes too.

--President Obama can’t change laws on his own once they’ve been enacted by Congress as he’s done with his health care law.    Someone needs to take President Obama to court to rein him in; the GOP appears ready to do so.  He can’t do “what he wants” via Executive Orders despite what he thinks.  Limits on Executive Orders need to be permanently defined by the Supreme Court  for this President and all future Presidents.  Until this happens, the checks and balances system will remain under threat from an “over-reaching Executive Branch.”  American Presidents do not rule by fiat like North Korea’s president or Russia’s president do.

--The Bieber brat is facing charges in Los Angeles, in Florida and in Toronto. He may be facing federal charges for smoking pot on a plane bound for the Super Bowl earlier this month as well.   His dad isn’t helping matters.

 

That’s all for now.

Media Needs to Throw the Ignore on Dennis Rodman’s North Korean Jaunts: Don’t Give the Egotistical Wingbag Any More Coverage

The media needs to stop covering the Dennis Rodman/Kim Jong Un story.  They’re giving both megalomaniacs the kind of press that they both crave.

Rodman got into a rant with a CNN reporter today, with his fellow ex-NBA players looking awfully uncomfortable in the background.   He is way out of his league in the area of “cultural exchanges.”   His idea of a cultural exchange is to marry himself and put himself in front of the cameras in a wedding dress.

If he wants to be friends with the North Korean brat, whatever.  Keep the cameras away and don’t report on his movements, and see how often he goes to North Korea when everyone is ignoring him.

“Polar Vortex” is Nothing to Get Worked Up About: It’s Happened Before and is Not Unprecedented

The news networks have been overblowing the “polar vortex” thing related to the cold snap in the U.S. and elsewhere.  It’s not an unprecedented event…this has happened many times before, and not just in the winter either.  Polar air does drive southward from time to time.

It is not related to global warming, despite what the global warming alarmists are trumpeting on CNN and MSNBC.  It’s SUPPOSED to be cold in the winter.

According to news network precedence, if it happened twenty years ago, it didn’t happen.  The reason why is they are targeting people young enough to not remember the last time we had an extremely cold winter, or a cooler-than-average summer due to the jet stream being further south than normal, and further south than we would like it. 

This too, will pass.  Until then, we can experience what the Russians normally experience during the winter in their country: cold temperatures.

I’m enjoying watching the global warming alarmists try to whip up a panic.  THE SKY IS FALLING!  THE SKY IS FALLING!  (NOT!)

So, This is What Global Warming Feels Like: Alarmists in the U.S. Should Stand Outside Naked Over the Next Few Days and Enjoy Their “Global Warming”

Global warming freaks in the U.S. will be trying to ignore freezing their collective butts off this week as their “global warming” nonsense took another major hit, a couple of weeks after a Russian research vessel sent to Antarctica to monitor “thinning polar ice” got trapped by record THICK ice.  How many icebreakers got stuck down there in record ice?  Two?    HOW EMBARASSING!

When will these fools admit that their “settled science” is nothing of the sort, and that they have a huge amount of research left to conduct before even being ready to form a hypothesis on global heating and cooling?  The only thing that’s melting around here is the “settled science” theory.

Enjoy freezing your butts off, global warming alarmists and AL GORE.   You can blame your pipes freezing and your carbon-emitting cars not starting because they’re frozen on “global warming” too. 

Hezbollah Involvement in Syria Has Brought Retaliation From Syrian Groups into Lebanon’s Streets: Who Didn’t See This Coming?

As expected, Syrian militant groups opposed to Syrian President Assad’s reign of terror have struck back at Hezbollah, the Lebanese-based terror group, by attacking Hezbollah targets inside Lebanon.

Hezbollah has been complaining that the targets that are being hit are civilian targets, which may or may not be true, but with their attacks on Syrian civilians, they should have taken steps to protect Lebanese civilians from retaliation.  The Lebanese are caught in the middle again.

Hezbollah probably considers the loss of Lebanese civilians as acceptable losses if it helps to keep one of its major suppliers of weapons in power.  They’ve already ruined Lebanon, and now they’re doing their best to ruin Syria too.  Did they really think that the Syrian rebels would take no steps to strike back, especially where Hezbollah lives?

I have no sympathy for Hezbollah.  If they want to do some good in the region, they should pull their forces from Syria, leave Assad to his fate,  recognize Israel and work toward peaceful goals.

Iraq Pulls Its Troops From Fallujah and Turns Control Over to Local Police, Who Are Promptly Defeated by Militants: This is Nouri al-Maliki’s Problem, Not Ours

Two Iraqi cities have been captured by al-Qaeda, or by militants opposed to both al-Qaeda and the Iraqi government, after Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki pulled the Iraqi Army from those areas.  Responsibility for security was turned over to local forces who were no match for battle-hardened militant fighters.   Fallujah and Ramadi both fell to the militants within days of the army pulling out.

Time to see if the Iraqi Prime Minister can back up his bold words and retake both cities, as well as securing the rest of al-Anbar province. 

He’s going to find out the cost of launching military operations against fortified enemy positions with major civilian populations nearby, in terms of lives and political capital. 

Can’t help but think about the press conferences held by this Iraqi Prime Minister who was quick to criticize U.S. and coalition forces for inflicting collateral damage on Fallujah and its residents during the occupation.  Now he’s calling the shots and ordering his military in. 

There’s no doubt that the Iraqi military will defeat the militants, but they’re going to cause the same kind of damage to the city and residents as the coalition did during the war, and Nouri al-Maliki will take the same kind of heat that the U.S. and international forces did when he criticized them.

This is an Iraqi problem, and the U.S. needs to stay out of Iraq.   We can’t go riding to the rescue of Nouri al-Maliki every time he makes a blunder and Islamic militants take full advantage by capturing entire cities.   Iraq has to deal with this on its own.

A&E Restores Phil Robertson to Duck Dynasty: As Expected, Liberal Groups Calling for A&E to Require “Rehabilitation” of Phil By Meeting With Them

A&E caved in from public pressure and Phil Robertson has been restored to Duck Dynasty. As predicted, liberal and civil rights groups are calling for A&E to require Phil to go through “rehabilitation” to prove that A&E still supports their various causes.

Will be interesting to see if A&E will insist on it, or if Phil is even willing to do so.   There was online speculation that if Phil did agree to it, if A&E would film it and turn such a meeting or series of meetings into episodes.  I highly doubt it.

President and Members of Congress Who Voted for Obamacare Should Face Impeachment or Recall: Their Ill-Conceived Actions in NOT READING THE BILL Before Voting “YES” Have Brought Serious Harm to Four Million Americans With Tens of Millions More Scheduled to Join Them Next Year

President Obama and every member of Congress who voted “yes” on the Affordable Care Act should face impeachment or recall proceedings for their serious lapse of judgment when they chose not to READ THE BILL before voting “YES” on it. 

It’s done nothing but bring serious financial harm to roughly four million Americans, with tens of millions more at risk of having their health insurance plans cancelled in 2014.

President Obama obviously didn’t read the bill either since he signed it into law and uttered statements like “If you like your plan, you can keep it.”   All that’s missing is the MISSION ACCOMPLISHED banner.

Everything that has happened so far was spelled out in great detail in the text of the Affordable Care Act.   If members were complaining that they didn’t have time to read it themselves, they should have read it right in the chamber, like they read the Constitution in the House of Representatives, and REQUIRED members of Congress to be there to listen to it be read.

Having some insurance is better than having no insurance at all.   Obamacare has stripped millions of their health insurance coverage, and the rollout of their replacement insurance has been an unmitigated disaster.  And millions more face having their insurance cancelled as spelled out in the Affordable Care Act next year.  Those who have been able to sign up aren’t sure if they’re covered or not.

Voting ‘yes’ on a bill without reading it should be considered a high crime and should be considered an impeachable offense.  It’s the height of irresponsible Congressional and Presidential conduct that must be stopped. 

No more voting on bills that they haven’t read!  If they don’t care to read the bills before voting on them, I have a solution: RESIGN!

A&E Is Punishing Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty for Quoting Verses of the Bible? Highly Ridiculous, Considering They’ve Made Religion an Integral Part of the Duck Dynasty Show

First, here’s the profanity-filled GQ article that got Phil Robertson into trouble with A&E.  I couldn’t help but notice that the profanity was all on the part of the author of the article, not from Phil.

Next, here’s the Corinthians quotation in as many Bible versions as you want it.  

I find the A&E position highly dubious.  They chose to make religion part of THEIR Duck Dynasty series.  Why are they punishing Phil for simply quoting verses from the Bible, as he does on the show?  If they didn’t want the family talking about religion on the show, they could have easily edited the religious aspects of the show out as they film more stuff than they actually use in the episodes.  This is totally on A&E. 

And their most bankable (former) personality has nothing to lose in this controversy.  He’s rich, because A&E helped to make him that way.

The First Amendment has nothing to do with this controversy.  A&E isn’t the government, and the First Amendment is about the government not infringing on freedom of speech (among other things).  This is about secularists attacking religion.  Again. 

Someone I know recently told me that the anti-Christ is walking in our very midst, and the anti-Christ isn’t a person.  It’s secularism, and A&E has fallen before it and is an active accomplice in slapping religious adherents around. 

A&E probably wants Phil to meet with gay groups to “rehabilitate” him as other networks have done with other celebrities who have gone off the reservation and spoken their minds.  They probably want him to retract his statements, but to do so would mean he’d be withdrawing direct quotes from the Bible.

I don’t see this happening…he’ll happily walk away from the TV show to be rid of them all, and not have to put up with the political correctness movement as spelled out in his A&E contract with their so-called “moral clauses.”  The Robertsons had already restricted A&E to four filming days a week, so they can have more personal time and not have the cameras in their faces constantly.

Phil himself said in the interview that he knew the end of the Duck Dynasty series was 4-5 years away at most, and that shows come and go.  They’ve been preparing for the end of the show’s run, so if it ends sooner, I doubt it will affect their other business ventures.  Their Duck Commander company is a multi-million dollar company, and will continue to be so after A&E ends Duck Dynasty.

If A&E doesn’t want their stars giving interviews to media outlets like GQ, that should be part of their contracts.  Asking someone like Phil a question like “What is a sin in your view?” is about as loaded a question as you can get.  Ambush journalism at it’s best and worst.

Cracker Barrel is a joke too.  They pulled Duck Dynasty merchandise from their shelves and then put them back up less than twelve hours later after they started feeling the national backlash that liberal outlets are also feeling after they piled onto the bandwagon. 

The question is not what Phil Robertson is going to do next…it’s going to be what will A&E do next to save face?  Cracker Barrel has egg in it’s face already.   I think A&E bit off more than it can chew.

If Afghanistan Doesn’t Want U.S. Troops, Even for a Short Amount of Time, President Obama Should Zero Out the U.S. Military Presence There And Bring Them Home

Afghan and U.S. officials are bickering over when a new U.S./Afghan status of forces agreement (SOFA) should be signed.  The Obama Administration says no later than December 31st of this year, the Afghans are saying after the next round of presidential elections in Afghanistan next year.

I would be in favor of the ZERO option as of January 1st, 2014, which is the same option President Obama used to pull troops out of Iraq.  No SOFA, no American troops. Sounds fine to me.

North Korea Abducts 85-Year-Old American Veteran: They Have to Resort to Bullying Senior Citizens to Make Some Kind of a Point?

North Korea pulled an American senior citizen off his plane in Pyongyang and have been holding him for close to a month.

This is totally unacceptable, and North Korea needs to get this veteran on a plane and out of that country immediately!  And the other American they’re holding should also be on the same plane.

What kind of military information can a senior citizen who’s been retired from military service since the 1950s give to North Korea that they don’t already have?  They’d better not put him on trial, which is what I fear is going to happen, or has already happened. 

Shame on North Korea!

Another 50-100 Million Insurance Cancellations Coming Due to Obamacare: Congress Must Repeal This Disaster Before It’s Too Late

Word hit the street that another 50-100 million health insurance policies may be cancelled in October of 2014, just before the mid-term elections.

If that many people lose their insurance and the Democrats hold fast to their Affordable (hardly affordable) Care Act, they are going to be in for a major shock in November. 

Congress needs to keep this from even happening and repeal it within a few months.   It was ill-conceived, not well thought out as to what their overall goal was, ramrodded through a Congress that didn’t even bother to read the entire bill, signed by an ultra-liberal and elitist President eager to have a signature piece of legislation (and who didn’t read the bill either), poorly implemented and disastrously rolled out to a population who had already seen five million insurance policies cancelled and the contract holders left with no insurance at all.

They need to scuttle this thing before a sizeable chunk of their constituents lose their employer-provided health insurance to this disaster of a law.

Police Officers Involved in Capital Shooting Are On Duty But Not Being Paid Due to Shutdown: This is WRONG!

The police officers involved in the shooting of a woman who used her car to attack them were on duty, but are not being paid either their wages or hazard pay due to the shutdown of the government.

Those officers are out there risking their lives to protect the Capitol, but that isn’t enough to get paid for their trouble??!   This insanity must end, and Congress owes these brave police officers an apology and back pay for the hours that they’re continuing to work.  And get shot at, and run over by insane people.

Those who refuse to negotiate to do the business of the American people are unfit to serve in Congress or as the President.  Shame on all our politicians, who are continuing to get paid to DO NOTHING!

Federal Treatment of World War II Veterans During Shutdown is DISGRACEFUL: WWII Monument is in Open Air and Should Be Accessible 24/7/365, Regardless of Whether the Government is Open or Not

The government should be ashamed of themselves, erecting barriers around open-air monuments in Washington during the shutdown, especially the World War II memorial. The government shouldn’t get in the way of our veterans paying what could be their final respects to their fallen comrades. 

Most of our surviving World War II veterans are in their 80s and 90s.  It is predicted that all of our veterans from that era will be gone by 2020.  This is no way to treat veterans who simply want to pay their respects at a memorial dedicated to their service, and to their fellow Americans who did not return.

If it was inside a building that required federal workers to be on site, that would be one thing.  But this is outside, where anyone can walk up to it.   It’s RIDICULOUS to erect barricades around them.

The federal government should remove the barricades immediately and welcome our veterans with open arms to a memorial dedicated to their courage and sacrifices, not arrest them for storming a barricade that shouldn’t be there in the first place.

Congressional Pay Should Be Cut Along With the Federal Workers They’ve Laid Off: This is Not Right

Congress is continuing to receive their pay, while many other federal workers are going without pay due to the shutdown of the Federal government.

This isn’t right.  

Congress should face the same financial pain that tens of thousands of others who work for the federal government are currently facing and have their own pay cut, with a possibility of not receiving back pay, like everybody else.

There’s a photo going around on Facebook that addresses this issue in the form of a proposed Constitutional amendment. 

It  reads: “Amendment 28—Congress shall pass no law that applies to the citizens of the United States that does not apply equally to the Senators or Representatives, and Congress shall pass no law that applies to the Senators or Representatives that does not apply equally to the citizens of the United States.”

That’s a GREAT idea.  We’d get more laws that make sense, with no exemptions for Congress.  They wouldn’t be so gung-ho to pass idiotic laws that they are not subject to.  Perhaps we should consider it.

GOP Keeps Moving the Goal Post: One Year Delay of Obamacare is the Latest New Demand in Confusing Series of Twists and Turns

I’m really disappointed with the current Republican party strategy of trying to deal with Obamacare.

They do not have a consistent message about what their goals are.  Are they trying to delay it, overturn it, or something else?  They need to pick their spot, and fight for it, and make their message about their fight clear to the American public.

Now, on the debt ceiling, I wish Congress would just raise it and pay closer attention to the current funding bills which make the debt ceiling debates necessary.  If Congress has a problem with the debt ceiling, they should spend less on pork and make cuts above and beyond sequester levels to the next budget.  That will make future debt ceiling fights in the federal government unnecessary as they’ll have room to maneuver while continuing to pay for what they voted on already.

On the federal government shutdown, the Senate took 1,372 DAYS to pass a budget, so that tells you how quickly Congress moves on passing a budget of ANY kind.   The government should learn to do more with less.  And the possibility of not paying soldiers on time who are fighting in the mountains of Afghanistan?  SHAMEFUL!

Congress needs to get its act together and vote its way out of this mess, or we’ll vote them out of office.  And President Obama needs to start negotiating and compromising on stuff.  President Reagan and House Speaker Tip O’Neal did.  So did President Clinton and Speaker Gingrich.   Why can’t our current President and current Speaker?  Both sides need to tone it down.