Ukraine Can Handle Putin, If We Give the Right Weapons

Liberals are complaining that we should never have extended NATO so far east, because it upset Russia in general, and Putin in particular.  Just how many East Block countries would liberals have left to the not so tender mercies of a resurgent Russia?  It seems clear to me that a policy of appeasement always fails, and that a policy of appeasement is what liberals recommend.  Their complaint implies that we should have left Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia out of NATO.  If we had, these Baltic countries would have been overrun by now.  The Budapest Memorandum, signed by the Clinton administration in 1994, guaranteed the territorial integrity of the Ukraine in return for the surrender of 1,800 ex-Soviet nuclear weapons on Ukrainian territory. It was signed by the US, UK and Russia.   The US has given no arms to Ukraine after Putin seized the Crimea and sponsored the separation of two rebel areas in eastern Ukraine from Kiev.  Our inaction demonstrates that our word, at least in executive agreements involving nuclear weapons, is no good.  We have done absolutely nothing to defend Ukraine's territorial integrity.

Putin has two big problems.  The low price of oil means he's broke, and his suppression of the Union of Mothers of Soldiers of Russia for counting casualties from the Ukrainian conflict, means he can't take large casualties.  Putin is trying to distract his populace from their economic problems with military victories.  He is currently building up forces near Ukraine in what looks like preparations for an all-out invasion.  President Obama will loudly denounce the invasion, and do nothing else.

The way to handle Putin is to give long range artillery and man portable guided anti-tank rockets to the Ukrainians, along with the training to use them properly.  The 40 million people of Ukraine are very willing to fight, but they need more effective weapons to increase the cost of Putin's adventurism.  The Russians have been fighting us with proxies they armed since the end of World War II.  Putin can hardly object to us if we use proxies against him.

This course of action doesn't even have to cost us anything.  The Saudis would probably pay for it because they want the Russians forced out of Syria.  If Putin is defeated in Ukraine, he will have to retreat from Syria.  If Putin is defeated in Ukraine, he may lose office and, without his position to defend himself, he may lose his life.  The last time oil prices were this low, Russia went bankrupt, Boris Yeltsin was forced out of office and Putin gained power.  It could easily happen again.

http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/08/24/trump-and-clinton-have-no-idea-how-to-deal-with-putin-russia-strategy-foreign-policy-cold-war/

Trump's Rookie Mistake: Free Publicity Stops At Republican Nomination

Trump made the mistake of thinking that if the Pravda Press gave him a free ride in the primaries, the love would endure in the general election.  That's a stupid rookie mistake!  The mainstream media is completely in the tank for the Democrats.  Trump got buckets of free publicity in the primaries because the Pravda Press believed he was the weakest Republican candidate.  Now that Trump is the nominee, sliming Trump, by suppressing anything positive him or any sensible argument he makes, is the 24x7 job of the mainstream media.  Since this has been the pattern for years, why is anybody surprised?  McCain was great, until he was nominated.  Romney caused cancer.  Will Republicans learn they need advertising to counter this muck before Democrats outlaw political advertising?  Probably not, because a second President Clinton with a Democrat Senate Majority will pack the Supreme Court.  The Citizens United ruling goes away and Congress regulates who is a legitimate news corporation.

The Pravda Press has to filter Trump news to be 100% negative in the general election because their candidate, Hillary Clinton, is so massively unattractive.  Hillary has committed numerous felonies, lies almost every time she opens her mouth, has been taking bribes since her miraculous $100,000 commodities trade in 1979 (using a broker disciplined for parking trades), and has no actual accomplishments she can point to other than winning the genetic lottery by being female.  If your candidate looks terrible, you have to make their candidate look worse.

For readers who think I’m going overboard about Democrats censoring election coverage, please look at their record.  Senate Democrats actually proposed an amendment to the Constitution that would allow Congress to regulate free speech.  Here’s the most important part of the text: “Congress shall have power to regulate the raising and spending of money and in-kind equivalents with respect to Federal elections.”  This amendment, S. J. Res. 19, was introduced by Tom Udall on June 18, 2013.  All 43 Senate Democrats voted for it.  Here's a link to the text of the bill:

https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-113sjres19is/pdf/BILLS-113sjres19is.pdf

I’m not whining that the press is being unfair to Trump.  They are always unfair to every Republican nominee for president in a general election. What I am saying is that the people around Trump should have been raising money and preparing advertising to get their message out because it was obvious the free publicity was going to stop.  When the press covered everything he said, Trump got votes, although not my vote.  Now that the press can put words in Trump's mouth, and not cover what he actually says, he's transformed into a monster nobody would vote for.  

Liberal Glee Amid The Ruins of the Constitution

 Liberals are chortling about Hillary Clinton’s 9 point lead in the polls.  They think that US politics is a zero sum game.  If Conservatives are losing, the Liberals must be winning.  It’s almost like a grade school recess kind of taunting.  But I have a question.  Why does it make Liberals happy that we're on the road to a banana republic form of government? We have a Pravda Press that suppresses news that embarrasses the government, a judiciary branch that votes the party line, an executive branch that ignores election results because they alone know what actions will put them on the "right side of history" and a legislature that only functions to the extent that it ratifies what our maximum leader wants to do.  Will it make Liberals happier when red neck Republicans get treated as slowly as poor veterans at the VA because they voted wrong, just as soon as we  replace deeply flawed Obamacare with single payer medicine?  Fact is, everyone can lose.

No Encryption Destroyed Russia in 1917, Hillary's Cyber Insecurity Can Do the Same for Us

The reason the Russians lost World War I and had the chaos that lead to the Communist Revolution in 1917 is simple.  Their army didn't encrypt their radio messages.  Do we need a president who makes the same kind of mistakes in cyber space?  Aren't Clinton's security problems more important than Trump's style?

The Pravda Press is grading Trump like this campaign is a gymnastic event during the Cold War, and they are the Romanian judge.  OK, he gets a 2.1 for style and a 0 for substance.  The country still will survive 4 years of Trump.  Hillary Clinton had 30,000 emails on a server that everyone with an interest could have hacked. All of those emails potentially open her to blackmail by Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-Un or unemployed hackers in basements like Romanian taxi driver Guccifer.   We don't know what's in the deleted emails, so we won't know if they are real or forgeries if Wikileaks publishes them.   Clinton has a history of selling her office for donations laundered through the Clinton Foundation, and the emails could prove it.  Do we feel lucky?