So Romney and Cruz agree....more money for Ukraine and fuck the USA!

The Biden regime and it's allies in the corrupt congress have pushed through another 40 billion down the rathole that is the Ukraine. It's corrupt government that tried to destroy President Trump and enriched Hunter Biden and the Big Guy are getting their payoff. I wonder how much is going to stick to the fingers of the Biden crime family and the Ukraine government.

Neo-liberal site "Hot Air" has a post praising Romney and Cruz for falling in line to the duopoly and shipping pallets of cash to these corrupt cunts while babies are literally starving and illegals pour over our border and gas is going for more than 5 bucks a gallon. The permernat government and the uni-party have spoken and these cocksuckers fell right in line.

Only eleven patriots voted no in the Senate.

11 GOP NOs: Blackburn Boozman Braun Crapo Hagerty Hawley Lee Lummis Marshall Paul Tuberville

 Cruz has forfeited any claim to being a true conservative for the MAGA side of the aisle.  I don't want to hear any more bullshit about how conservative he is and what brilliant man he is because when you vote with Mitt Romney you are a dumb fuck.

Another reason the Rhinos want us to go to war with Russia

Ukrainian forces filmed shooting dead wounded Russian soldier

NY Post April 6, 2022

Grisly video footage emerged Wednesday showing Ukrainian forces shooting and killing a wounded Russian soldier on a road west of Kyiv.

The footage, verified by the New York Times, shows two bodies — apparently Russian soldiers — lying on the road in a pool of bright red blood.

The closest soldier, whose jacket is pulled up above his head, can be seen twitching and is heard struggling to breathe.

“He’s still alive,” a man’s voice says. “Film these marauders. Look, he’s still alive. He’s gasping.”

A man to the right of the camera raises his rifle and fires two shots into the gasping man’s torso.

The wounded Russian gasps again,and is shot a third time in the back before he stops moving.

(Look I don't believe anything that comes out of the NY Times, but it is just another reason not to get involved)

 

They will never learn

 

They are beating the drums for war just like they always do.

The New York Post is full of editorials demanding that we stop Russia and what they are doing in the Ukraine. They wail and cry that this is just the first step in Russia taking back the rest of Eastern Europe and somehow it is our problem, so we have to send troops or impose sanctions or some other shit.

As Tucker Carlson has so ably pointed out we should be worried about our border not Ukraine's as it is really not any of our business. The Ukraine has long been a part of Russia and we really should not dip our beak into that mess. Most of the inhabitants of the two disputed provinces are ethnic Russians and would welcome the control by Moscow. So let them take back their country and lets not be the policeman of the world.

We have enough problems with our own policeman who are enforcing illegal and immoral mask mandates and arresting people who protest. We need to clean up our own house.

America first. Let the European weenies worry about their problems. We aren't responsible for them anymore. They hate us and only want to take our money and let us expend our blood and treasure defending them. It's time to come home. 

America first. 

Laxity in the Ukrainian nuclear industry

"Ukraine has been experimenting with American-made clones of Russian fuel assemblies since 2005. That was the year that Energoatom shipped six TVS-WR assemblies manufactured by Westinghouse to the South Ukraine nuclear plant and began their pre-installation inspection. As a result of their experiments, it was concluded that the American fuel assemblies were defective. However, they still decided to proceed to the next stage of the experiment – the annual loading of the reactor using this fuel. In 2008, Energoatom and a Swedish subsidiary of Westinghouse signed an agreement to supply the South Ukraine nuclear plant with enough American fuel for the scheduled annual partial refueling of the three reactors from 2011 to 2015.

However, as early as April 2012, malfunctions in the American assemblies were noted at the reactors of the South Ukraine nuclear plant. In an emergency procedure, all the TVS-WR assemblies were completely unloaded from the reactors after they were found to be damaged, mainly due to structural flaws in the spacer grids. As a result, in 2013, following a thorough inspection, Ukraine’s State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate instituted a total ban on the use of American fuel at Ukrainian nuclear plants.

But the victory of the Revolution of Dignity has once again cleared the path for American TVS-WRs to be used in Ukraine. In April 2014, Kiev carefully reassembled the torn-up scraps of its old contract with Westinghouse and decided to give things another go. The media reported that American fuel was subsequently loaded into reactor no. 3 at the South Ukraine nuclear plant (March 2015), reactor no. 5 at the Zaporizhia nuclear plant (June 2016), and reactor no. 2 at the South Ukraine nuclear plant (August 2017). The consequences were soon evident."

https://southfront.org/get-ready-new-chernobyl-ukraine/

WSJ: "Russia Faces Harsh Criticism Over Malaysia Airlines Crash"

Mr. Putin said Russia would do everything it could to "ensure that an objective understanding of what happened becomes available to the Russian public," but reiterated his stance that Ukraine was at fault.

"This tragedy wouldn't have occurred if there were peace in that country, or in any case, if hostilities had not resumed in southeast Ukraine," he said at a Cabinet meeting on the economy, according to a Kremlin statement. "And certainly, the government over whose territory it occurred is responsible for this terrible tragedy." (read more)

A pro-Russian separatist at the site of a Malaysia Airlines crash

NYT: Putin Asserts Right to Use Force in Eastern Ukraine

"President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia emphasized on Thursday that the upper chamber of the Russian Parliament had authorized him to use military force if necessary in eastern Ukraine, and also stressed Russia’s historical claim to the territory, repeatedly referring to it as “new Russia” and saying that only “God knows” why it became part of Ukraine."

Speaking in a televised question-and-answer show, Mr. Putin also admitted for the first time that Russian armed forces had been deployed in Crimea, the disputed peninsula that Russia annexed last month immediately after a large majority of the population voted in a referendum to secede from Ukraine.

During the question-and-answer show, Mr. Putin stressed that he had the authority to invade Ukraine, but that he hoped it would not be necessary.

“I remind you that the Federation Council has given the president the right to use armed forces in Ukraine,” he said, referring to the upper house of Parliament. “I really hope that I do not have to exercise this right and that by political and diplomatic means we will be able to solve all of the sharp problems.” (read more)

WSJ: The West Leaves Ukraine to Putin

"'We're the chosen generation," says Arseniy Yatsenyuk, Ukraine's interim prime minister. He's referring to all those who made this winter's European revolution. For the first time since 1654, when Ukrainian Cossacks formed a fateful alliance with Moscow against Polish rulers, Ukrainians are heading back West."

Their timing is terrible. Two decades ago, when the Berlin Wall fell, the West embraced another generation of Eastern Europeans. Ukraine has gotten a different welcoming committee. An economically feeble European Union gorges on Russian energy and dirty money while lecturing Ukraine on Western values but refusing to defend it. Asking for Washington's help against Russian attack, Kiev finds a man "chosen" in the past two presidential elections to get America out of the world's trouble spots.

Vladimir Putin sees a West made soft by money, led by weak men and women, unwilling to make sacrifices to defend their so-called ideals. In the Ukrainian crisis, the image fits. Russia's president is many things, but most of all he is resolute. He took the EU and America's measure and annexed Crimea last month at minimal cost. Ignoring Western pleas for "de-escalation," Russia this weekend invaded eastern Ukraine. Just don't look for video of T-72 tanks rolling across the borders, not yet at least. (read more) 

"Satellites Show Russian Forces Poised Near Ukraine"

"NATO released satellite photographs on Thursday showing Russian military equipment, including fighter jets and tanks, that it described as part of a deployment of as many as 40,000 troops near the border with Ukraine. The release came the same day that President Vladimir V. Putin reiterated a threat to curtail gas sales to Ukraine."

"The photographs, taken by a commercial satellite imaging company called DigitalGlobe, offered some of the first documentary evidence of a military buildup that the West says Russia could use to invade Ukraine at any moment. They were released at a news conference in Belgium by Brig. Gary Deakin, the director of NATO’s Comprehensive Crisis and Operations Management Center." (read more)

NYT

The Diplomat: "Interpreting Putin's Decision"

"So why has Putin risked Russia’s economic welfare and political space to swallow Crimea, push Ukraine out, and alienate the entire Western world? Is Putin “in another world” as German Chancellor Angela Merkel claimed he is? In my opinion, there are at least two considerations behind Putin’s decision."

The first is the realist, geo-political consideration. In Putin’s world, since the collapse of the former Soviet Union, Russia has lost nearly one fourth of its geography, one half of its population, and more than half of its GDP. Among the “lost” territories are those that are strategically important or militarily advanced, such as Ukraine and the Baltic states. With the eastward expansion of NATO, and the integration of former Soviet satellite states and republics in Eastern Europe and the Baltics into Europe, the traditional buffer zone between Russia and the West is increasingly squeezed and Russia’s space for strategic maneuvering becomes smaller with each year... (read more)

The second consideration is more psychological in nature. Following the end of Cold War, embracing the West was the first priority of Russian foreign policy. But to Moscow’s dismay, it found that the West still harbored strong reservations and considerable distrust. Years spent courting and wooing provided little of what Russia craved most: equal membership in the West and economic prosperity. Though Russia became part of the exclusive G8, it never enjoyed the full status and say of the other seven members, always remaining an “other.” Economically, the shock remedy proposed by the West and faithfully implemented by Boris Yeltsin didn’t bring the expected economic benefit. Instead, it took Russia’s economy into freefall, leaving the average Russian worse off than before.

It was Putin who saved Russia from its miserable condition. He readjusted both Russia’s domestic and foreign policies, and distanced the country from the West, instead seeking opportunities to resurrect past Soviet glories. As the Russian economy improved, the West found that its time was passing. The 2008 economic crisis hit the U.S. and Europe hard and they found themselves more reliant on the emerging powers, Russia included. It is Britain, France, and even Germany who are now busy appealing to Russian oil bacons to buy more and invest more. The balance of power between Russia and the West has shifted... (read more)

Russians, and especially Putin learned a hard lesson from the post-Cold War romance with the West: For all the talk of democracy and freedom, the fact remains that the strong dictate to the weak.

With Europe rotten and United States weakened, a resurgent and confident Russia will definitely not let a geo-strategically important former Soviet republic fall entirely into the West’s camp. By annexing Crimea, Putin not only secured Russia’s naval base and its strategic gateway to the Black Sea, he also sent a powerful message to Ukraine and the West: Ignore Russia’s legitimate strategic concerns at your own peril.

The Diplomat via ZeroHedge

"Merkel Declares G-8 Defunct Given Crisis in Ukraine"

"German Chancellor Angela Merkel declared the Group of Eight leading nations defunct given the current crisis in Ukraine, in a clear message to Russia that the world's seven other major industrialized countries consider its actions in Ukraine unacceptable."

"As long as there is no political environment for such an important political format as the G-8, the G-8 doesn't exist anymore, not the summit nor the format," said Ms. Merkel, in Germany's parliament, the Bundestag.

"Russia is widely isolated in all international organizations," the chancellor said. read more

 Wall Street Journal

Merkel backs US on the sanctioning of Russia

“If Russia continues on its course of the past weeks, that will not only be a great catastrophe for Ukraine. It will cause massive damage to Russia, both economically and politically,” [Chancellor Merkel] said. “None of us wants it to come to this, but we are determined to act. Let me be absolutely clear; the territorial integrity of Ukraine is not up for discussion.”

...Russia cannot suspend oil and gas exports without cutting off its own source of foreign revenue. Any such move would destroy its credibility as a supplier of energy, accelerating Europe’s long-term switch to other sources.

Russian companies have $653bn (£392bn) of foreign dollar debt, and must roll over roughly $150bn this year. Yields on five-year bonds have already spiked 200 basis points, even for blue-chip firms. The rouble has fallen 11pc this year after dropping 8pc last year, making dollar debts harder to repay. “It is going to be very difficult to roll over these bonds, and it will be at much higher cost,” said Mr Ash.

Capital flight reached $63bn last year. Former finance minister Alexei Kudrin said this could reach $50bn a quarter as the crisis deepens. The central bank has already raised interest rates sharply to stem outflows, pushing the economy into recession.

...“Russia could cut off 2.5m barrels a day of refined products such as diesel that are hard for Europe to replace since it has run down its refineries,” he said.

Germany is in an awkward position since it exports $50bn of cars, machinery and industrial goods to Russia each year. There are 6,200 German companies in the country with vast sunk costs. Last year alone they invested $105bn. Germany’s trade group BDA said a tit-for-tat sanctions war would be “painful” for Germany but “life-threatening” for Russia.

Igor Rudensky, head of the Duma’s Economics Committee, said sanctions will boomerang. “They are a double-edged sword, and Western states should be very careful,” he said.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Beyond the tinkering the US and NATO have committed in Ukraine, there is the larger issue of encroachment. Yes US and NATO have made a move to bring Ukraine toward the west, with Russia's sharp retort being the stealth occupation of the Crimea to protect the integrity of their only warm water naval base at Sevastopol.  As far as I know, Putin still denies the troops in Crimea are Russian, as he did in this press conference:

"QUESTION: Mr President, a clarification if I may. The people who were blocking the Ukrainian Army units in Crimea were wearing uniforms that strongly resembled the Russian Army uniform. Were those Russian soldiers, Russian military?

VLADIMIR PUTIN: Why don’t you take a look at the post-Soviet states. There are many uniforms there that are similar. You can go to a store and buy any kind of uniform.

QUESTION: But were they Russian soldiers or not?

VLADIMIR PUTIN: Those were local self-defence units.

QUESTION: How well trained are they? If we compare them to the self-defence units in Kiev…

VLADIMIR PUTIN: My dear colleague, look how well trained the people who operated in Kiev were. As we all know they were trained at special bases in neighbouring states: in Lithuania, Poland and in Ukraine itself too. They were trained by instructors for extended periods. They were divided into dozens and hundreds, their actions were coordinated, they had good communication systems. It was all like clockwork.  Did you see them in action? They looked very professional, like special forces. Why do you think those in Crimea should be any worse?

QUESTION: In that case, can I specify: did we take part in training Crimean self-defence forces?

VLADIMIR PUTIN: No, we did not."


Does this necessarily mean Russia has cause to annex Crimea, if Crimea itself votes to become part of Russia? Ukraine is a buffer country for Russia, so naturally it is one for Europe. 

"We have this freedom inside our hearts, we have this freedom inside our minds"

Zero Hedge: "Vladimir Putin Nominated For Nobel Peace Prize"

"It would appear the Norwegian Nobel Institute is starting to lose it. Just a few years after President Obama won the Peace Prize (while mired in overseas wars), the director of the prestigious entity announced today that Russian President Vladimir Putin, accused of invading Ukraine - suspiciously un-peaceful action - has been nominated for the Peace Prize. Putin joins NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai as a nominee for the award to be announced in October." read more

I thought this was some kind of early April fools. It is not. It appears to be very real.

Hillary on Putin, Ukraine

"In a speech at a health care forum in Florida last week as the [Ukraine] conflict was unfolding, Clinton said she was still talking to some of her former governmental colleagues and predicted Putin would “look seriously” at consolidating his country’s position in eastern Ukraine.

Putin “sits as the absolute authority now in Russia and it is quite reminiscent of the kind of authority exercised in the past by Russian leaders, by the czars and their successor Communist leaders,” she said, according to CNN. She added that it was imperative for the U.S. to back a “unified Ukraine.”

On Monday night, the pro-Clinton group Correct the Record, which hadn’t weighed in on the Ukraine issue before, came to her defense."

“Secretary Clinton worked to successfully secure Russia’s cooperation toward anti-terrorism efforts in Afghanistan, and worked with Russia to secure critical, crippling sanctions against Iran. Not to mention, Secretary Clinton oversaw passage and enactment of the New START Treaty reducing nuclear weapons and making us all safer. This is another case of selective memory lapses by Republican opportunists,” communications director Adrienne Elrod said in a statement, after the group posted tweets to that effect."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If Hillary were to be inaugurated into the presidency in January 2017, Putin would be president of Russia until May 2018, and possibly six more years after that if he chose to run again and won. Wouldn't that be cute?

"Kiev on Edge After Russia OKs Putin's Military Intervention Plan"

"Kiev was on edge Saturday after Russian parliament’s upper house unanimously approved President Vladimir Putin’s request for a military intervention in Ukraine, according to a Kremlin statement."

The approval came within two hours of Putin appealing to parliament, saying the move is needed to protect ethnic Russians and the personnel of a Russian military base in Ukraine's strategic region of Crimea, a peninsula the size of Massachusetts where three out of four people speak Russian.

However, the vote does not specify that Russian troops are authorized to enter Crimea; instead, it states Russia's military force can enter "Ukraine," giving themselves a legal cloak to target more than Crimea.

NBC

CNN: "Sarah Palin may be having a bragging rights moment"

"In 2008, when she was the GOP vice presidential nominee, Palin questioned in a speech whether then-Sen. Barack Obama would have the foreign policy credentials to handle a scenario in which Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine."

After the Russian army invaded the nation of Georgia, Senator Obama's reaction was one of indecision and moral equivalence – the kind of response that would only encourage Russia's Putin to invade Ukraine next," she said in Reno, Nevada on October 21, 2008.

The former Alaska governor was happy to highlight her prediction on Friday and scold those who criticized her 2008 comments.

"Yes, I could see this one from Alaska," she said on Facebook. That remark was a reference to a 2008 interview in which Palin argued that Alaska's proximity to Russia helped boost her foreign policy experience.

Left leaning publication The Wire is having to grudgingly acknowledge that Sarah Palin was right.

So some of these things did happen! Administration officials sat down with Iran and worked out a temporary agreement to curb the refinement of uranium. The United States violated Pakistan's sovereign territory without its knowledge — to kill Osama bin Laden. And he is drawing down troops in Iraq. Whether or not you think that all of these things resulted in "crises," in Palin's evocative terminology, is up to you.

But it doesn't really seem like she deserves credit for the Ukraine thing. For one thing, calling what's happening at the moment an "invasion" is overly strong...

Overly strong? Palin's predictions, coming to be as a result of the election of Obama, have come to pass, just as she had predicted them. Watch the video after clicking Read More below.

Meanwhile, former Defense secretary Gates, "dismantles Joe Biden’s elder statesman status*", declaring in his recent memoir that Biden had been “wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”

CNN, The Wire, Politico *6th paragraph

Impeached Ukrainian President Yanukovich's abandoned

Forty-eight photos at izismile.com

According to Wikipedia the president 18 other residences available.