COLLECTIVE MADNESS
“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."
>
I smell fear and blood.
ReplyDeleteThe Republicans have changed the speech in the Democrat's tele-prompter and have Obama stammering and stuttering over the culture wars debate.
ReplyDeletePicture this
ReplyDeleteCarolyn Kaster / Associated Press
Arlette Figdore of York, Pa., right, holds a campaign sign with an image of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin as "Rosie the Riveter" at a campaign rally in Lancaster, Pa.
By JAY NEWTON-SMALL/CHICAGO
ReplyDeleteWith the surge in Republican enthusiasm and John McCain's poll numbers generated by the emergence of Sarah Palin as a GOP superstar, it's no wonder that many Democrats are already hitting the panic button. The Obama campaign, however, isn't sounding any alarms, and it's not just because it believes the post-convention glow will disappear soon enough and voters will get back to focusing on issues more than personality. Much of its confidence stems from a tactical advantage on the ground it showcased to great effect in the primary battle with Hillary Clinton, one which it believes could be the deciding factor in the general election as well.
i was watching msnbc and saw these "liberated" professional women saying how Palin cant be a "good" mother with FIVE kids and be the GOV...
ReplyDeleteWTF....
As a Democrat, Pro Choicer (for McCain) isn't PALIN every thing we always wished for for our daughters and wives?
Her position on specific issues (choice for example) are NOT the ISSUE...
It's HER choice to run for ANY office in the land....
The Messiah has no clothes...
I predict McCain by 27%
DR , I posted your pic.
ReplyDeleteIt was not clear late Tuesday whether the lipstick spat would garner much attention, but the exchange demonstrated the challenges facing Obama as the McCain camp tries to squeeze every possible advantage out of the Palin candidacy.
ReplyDeleteWell, on Wendsday morning it seems to be crystal clear.
The Rantings of a P.T.A. Mom
ReplyDeleteBy Sandra Tsing Loh
...
So it is with huge grief-filled disappointment that I discovered that the Obamas send their children to the University of Chicago Laboratory School (by 5th grade, tuition equals $20,286 a year). The school’s Web site quotes all that ridiculous John Dewey nonsense about developing character while, of course, isolating your children from the poor. A pox on them and, while we’re at it, a pox on John Dewey! I’m sick to death of those inspirational Dewey quotes littering the Web sites of $20,000-plus-a-year private schools, all those gentle duo-tone-photographed murmurings about “building critical thinking and fostering democratic citizenship” in their cherished students, living large on their $20,000-a-year island.
Meanwhile, Joseph Biden, the Amtrak senator, standing up boldly for the right to be a Roman Catholic, appears to have sent all three children to the lovely looking Archmere Academy in Delaware. Archmere’s Web site notes some public school districts allow Archmere students to use public school buses. Well, isn’t that great — your tax dollars at work in the great state of Delaware because with $18,000 a year in tuition, they can’t afford their own buses.
Then again, a spot of happy news for the Democrats: not only did John McCain’s four children attend elite private schools in Arizona, but collective donations to their children’s private schools between 2001 and 2006, totaled $500,000.
And yes, I know I appear to be ranting on like a pit bull without lipstick, which brings me to the final nail in the coffin in this sorry election year. As a Democrat I am horrified that Sarah Palin is the one who snagged the deeply profound — and absolutely ignored by professional smart people — emotional real estate of “P.T.A. mother.” I too am, in fact, not just “my kids’ mom” but their Title I Los Angeles public school P.T.A. secretary. This unheard female howl is, for better or worse, what Ms. Palin has set out to tap into; it is real, and I am sick that we’ve let the Republicans charge this ground.
Sarah Palin’s children went to what looks like a humble little public school: Iditarod Elementary on Wasilla Fishhook Road. The school’s score on www.greatschools.net is a 4. That’s a lot of street cred, for a gun-totin’, snow-mobilin’ creationist-lovin’ lady.
Oh, I’m such a depressed, Democrat P.T.A. mother.
The Democrats are stunned and claiming Obama did not mean it and the Republicans are fabricating a story. However, Obama may have not realized the metaphor as he spoke, but from the crowd reaction, he had to know how the crowd heard the statement when they jumped to their feet. Obama enjoined the moment. He may have stumbled into it, but he did not do the right thing in clarifying his comment.
ReplyDeleteNow compare that to Biden who immediately realized he made a mistake asking the man in the wheelchair to rise up.
Obama blew it.
As my wife just told me, she's voting for real change, in four years, so she's voting for Palin, this November.
ReplyDeleteShe's got the fever.
FOX & Friends
ReplyDeleteThe BOAR War
YouTube - Heart - Barracuda
ReplyDeleteThat was the Best Biden Recovery I've seen.
ReplyDeleteGreat find on the "Rosie the Riveter" signs, Rat.
ReplyDeleteBiden: That was the Best Biden Recovery I've seen.
ReplyDeleteThat's the only way Biden gets covered, when he makes a gaffe.
Fresh blood for the vampire
ReplyDeleteA beady-eyed McCain gets a boost from the charismatic Sarah Palin, a powerful new feminist -- yes, feminist! -- force.
Plus: Obama must embrace his dull side.
By Camille Paglia
Conservative though she may be, I felt that Palin represented an explosion of a brand new style of muscular American feminism. At her startling debut on that day, she was combining male and female qualities in ways that I have never seen before. And she was somehow able to seem simultaneously reassuringly traditional and gung-ho futurist. In terms of redefining the persona for female authority and leadership, Palin has made the biggest step forward in feminism since Madonna channeled the dominatrix persona of high-glam Marlene Dietrich and rammed pro-sex, pro-beauty feminism down the throats of the prissy, victim-mongering, philistine feminist establishment.
...
As a dissident feminist, I have been arguing since my arrival on the scene nearly 20 years ago that young American women aspiring to political power should be studying military history rather than taking women's studies courses, with their rote agenda of never-ending grievances. I have repeatedly said that the politician who came closest in my view to the persona of the first woman president was Sen. Dianne Feinstein, whose steady nerves in crisis were demonstrated when she came to national attention after the mayor and a gay supervisor were murdered in their City Hall offices in San Francisco. Hillary Clinton, with her schizophrenic alteration of personae, has never seemed presidential to me -- and certainly not in her bland and overpraised farewell speech at the Democratic convention (which skittered from slow, pompous condescension to trademark stridency to unseemly haste).
...
It is certainly premature to predict how the Palin saga will go. I may not agree a jot with her about basic principles, but I have immensely enjoyed Palin's boffo performances at her debut and at the Republican convention, where she astonishingly dealt with multiple technical malfunctions without missing a beat. A feminism that cannot admire the bravura under high pressure of the first woman governor of a frontier state isn't worth a warm bucket of spit.
...
But what of Palin's pro-life stand? Creationism taught in schools? Book banning? Gay conversions? The Iraq war as God's plan? Zionism as a prelude to the apocalypse? We'll see how these big issues shake out. Right now, I don't believe much of what I read or hear about Palin in the media. To automatically assume that she is a religious fanatic who has embraced the most extreme ideas of her local church is exactly the kind of careless reasoning that has been unjustly applied to Barack Obama, whom the right wing is still trying to tar with the fulminating anti-American sermons of his longtime preacher, Jeremiah Wright.
The witch-trial hysteria of the past two incendiary weeks unfortunately reveals a disturbing trend in the Democratic Party, which has worsened over the past decade. Democrats are quick to attack the religiosity of Republicans, but Democratic ideology itself seems to have become a secular substitute religion. Since when did Democrats become so judgmental and intolerant? Conservatives are demonized, with the universe polarized into a Manichaean battle of us versus them, good versus evil. Democrats are clinging to pat group opinions as if they were inflexible moral absolutes. The party is in peril if it cannot observe and listen and adapt to changing social circumstances.
...
But the pro-life position, whether or not it is based on religious orthodoxy, is more ethically highly evolved than my own tenet of unconstrained access to abortion on demand. My argument (as in my first book, "Sexual Personae,") has always been that nature has a master plan pushing every species toward procreation and that it is our right and even obligation as rational human beings to defy nature's fascism. Nature herself is a mass murderer, making casual, cruel experiments and condemning 10,000 to die so that one more fit will live and thrive.
Hence I have always frankly admitted that abortion is murder, the extermination of the powerless by the powerful. Liberals for the most part have shrunk from facing the ethical consequences of their embrace of abortion, which results in the annihilation of concrete individuals and not just clumps of insensate tissue. The state in my view has no authority whatever to intervene in the biological processes of any woman's body, which nature has implanted there before birth and hence before that woman's entrance into society and citizenship.
On the other hand, I support the death penalty for atrocious crimes (such as rape-murder or the murder of children). I have never understood the standard Democratic combo of support for abortion and yet opposition to the death penalty. Surely it is the guilty rather than the innocent who deserve execution?
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ReplyDelete“You can just see it on his face - he’s in love with himself.”
ReplyDeleteStarling on Obama from Previous Thread:
ReplyDelete"He really seems rattled and to have lost sight of the fact that he's not running against her, but against McCain."
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteKnucklehead said…
ReplyDelete“This whole Palin thing is just getting to be good fun!
BTW, My Better Two-Thirds really didn’t know who Biden was prior to Obama picking him. She’s been paying some attention since.
Her take?
“He’s going to say something really stupid and insulting to women when he debates her.
You can just see it on his face - he’s in love with himself.”
I can’t ’splain his self-love logically leads to saying something stupid and insulting to women in a debate with Palin, but heh, she’s been correct far too often, despite what appears to me to be lack of logical connection, to argue with.“
We are not the World
ReplyDeleteThe Business of America is Business
YouTube - Heart - Barracuda (Live 1990)
ReplyDeleteYouTube - Heart - Barracuda (1977)
ReplyDeleteThey were better looking when they were younger.
(surprise)
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteIs starling still teaching at the American University in Dubai?
ReplyDeleteHe exemplifies the Global Village.
He is amongst those morphing the world to our image.
- Crazy On You (live 1976)
ReplyDeleteWhose image, White Man?
ReplyDeleteRockyfeller, I know.
ReplyDeletePresident Palin will take care of that.
Starling used to be a Boeing Engineer, he can still find Work when we become UltraNationalists for Palin!
ReplyDeleteDon't Tread on the Moose!
ReplyDelete(killer)
Here's American Thinkers take on the episode, which is he's plausibly inept. Not being the deep deep thinker bob is, they don't see the death wish striving to surface.
ReplyDeleteObama shouldn't be allowed around firearms.
Great on Rosie the Riveter, Rat.
Take that, Rosie O'Donnell.
Lyndon Johnson said Gerald Ford was the only man he knew who couldn't chew gum and walk at the same time.
ReplyDeletePolitics is rough.
The 20 questions we would ask Sarah Palin
ReplyDeleteTue, 09/09/2008 - 12:50pm
Rebecca Frankel, FP Passport
Though Republican campaign handlers have resisted the clamoring of "elitist," mud-slinging reporters for a press conference with Sarah Palin, the VP nominee will sit down for her first campaign-trail interview with ABC's Charlie Gibson at some point later this week. While campaign advisor Rick Davis says she's not scared to answer questions, Palin is said to be enduring some intense cram sessions with foreign policy tutors like Joe Lieberman.
A reasonable series of questions or the VP or the Pres, for that matter.
Barry needs to become the Magic Man
ReplyDeleteDeep thinker that missed Michelle's CHIP?
ReplyDeleteGimme a break, al-Blob!
We know you're a Druggie now.
ReplyDeleteStayin up to Late Nite on Crack.
Freud tried to psychoanalize the whole human race with a theory built around genital organization, which is about as successful as 'putting lipstick on a pig's face.'
ReplyDeleteGot your deniers,
ReplyDeleteand you got your Other Worlders.
Genital Organization?
ReplyDeleteBarry shoulda been a Genital Organizer.
...you know about those guy's Organs!
Personals:
ReplyDeleteGenital Organizer Needs Blow-Job, Ten Speed's Gone Flat.
I said Michelle's got a CHIP, but I'm still awaiting the "I Hate Whitey" rave.
ReplyDeleteHonestly, the times I've seen her speak, I haven't noticed a seething volcano about to erupt. Maybe she's good at concealing it, or I'm unperceptive.
She may have vetoed Hillary for vp, or Obama may have thought at the time he didn't need her, or, a little of both.
When the election is over, and Obama has lost, then Michelle might lose it, and go on a rant.
Maybe she'll put out a Chicago hit on Palin tomorrow, I don't know.
Ah, hell, all these various writers got to come up with something distinctive, otherwise they don't get paid.
ReplyDelete"Honestly, the times I've seen her speak, I haven't noticed a seething volcano about to erupt.
ReplyDeleteMaybe she's good at
1. concealing it, or
2. I'm unperceptive."
---
2
Lacking the father figure, Obama didn't have a target for the aggressive Oedipal dives we normal ones generally take out on papa, the alien hated other.
ReplyDeleteA white grandmother just isn't the same.
You're just jealous al-Bob, spent all those years on the Deere, when you coulda become ShakesDeere.
ReplyDeleteYou asked me Doug, if I ever saw something that wasn't there.
ReplyDeleteWhat about you :)
"Oedipal dives "
ReplyDelete---
I love it!
Goin Down on Mom!
Now it looks like we better put the whole Democratic Party on Suicide Watch
ReplyDeleteThey've all gone mad.
They were all along.
ReplyDeletePalin's bringing 'em to the surface.
SubMariner Barracuda Strikes Again.
Say,
ReplyDelete"Palin pick 'lipstick on a pig'"
10 times, fast as you can.
"The posting was published 11 days ago, well before Sen. Barack Obama drew sharp criticism yesterday when he jabbed at Palin and Sen. John McCain's idea of "change" by stating, 'You can put lipstick on a pig, it's still a pig.'"
ReplyDelete--
It's OVER.
Where'd you find that, al-Blob?
"*How* did you find that, Al?"
ReplyDeleteh/t bob
ReplyDeleteLast year while criticizing health proposals from the Democratic presidential candidates, McCain said Hillary Clinton's plan resembled a failed proposed she offered as first lady during the 1990s.
"I think they put some lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig," McCain of her proposal
Another instance of candidate sexism?
It has barely begun, doug
ReplyDeleteTry,
ReplyDelete"Porky Palin Picked a Peck of Pickled Politicians."
And if McCain wins ...
ReplyDeleteThen what?
None of your issues will be addressed, to your liking.
Prep for Palin 2012 and Hope for Change?
I think we best hope that the jester Frankenstein gets elected, so we can laugh like hell as the country goes to hell, no matter who's elected. Cover all the bases.
ReplyDeleteDaily Presidential Tracking Poll
ReplyDeleteWednesday, September 10, 2008
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Wednesday shows Barack Obama and John McCain each attracting 46% of the vote. When "leaners" are included, it’s Obama 48%, McCain 47% (see recent daily results). Tracking Poll results are released at 9:30 a.m. Eastern Time each day and a FREE daily e-mail update is available.
Data released last night shows John McCain opening a double digit lead in Montana. Tonight, at 5:00 p.m. Eastern, new polling will be released for New Mexico, North Dakota, and Alaska. Polling for Senate and Governors’ races will be released at 3:00 p.m. Eastern. Presidential polling has also been released for Colorado, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.
Obama now enjoys a 193-186 lead in the Electoral College. When “leaners” are included, the Rasmussen Reports Balance of Power Calculator shows Obama leading 264-247 (see Quick Campaign Overview). A total of 270 Electoral Votes are needed to win the White House (see 50-State Summary).
Also coming later today, new data will be released showing public perceptions of the Vice Presidential nominees--Sarah Palin and Joe Biden (data available now for Premium Members).
A Washington Post poll generated comment yesterday by noting that White Women favor McCain. Rasmussen Reports polling has consistently shown a similar result, but it is important to note that there is nothing unusual about this finding. Four years ago, President Bush managed to defeat Senator John Kerry 55% to 44% among white women. Today’s tracking poll data shows McCain leading 51% to 44% among this group. Among all women, Obama leads by eight. Among men, McCain leads by eight
I'll take McCain's Supremes over O'Marxist's any day, 'Rat.
ReplyDelete---
And them Fuckers are too OLD to wait it out, this time.
WTF do YOU want?
ReplyDelete(within the realm of the possible)
ReplyDeleteMcCain's preferred nominations will not get confirmed, doug.
ReplyDeleteTake that to the bank.
We'll get Souter, Kennedy & Stevens type Republican Judges, at best.
No different than the Judges to be replaced.
Yet somehow none of this is yet leaving a dent. The result is that a politician who conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan calls a "Christianist" - seeking to politicise Christianity the way Islamists politicise Islam - could soon be a heartbeat away from the presidency. Remember, this is a woman who once addressed a church congregation, saying of her work as governor - transport, policing and education - "really all of that stuff doesn't do any good if the people of Alaska's heart isn't right with God".
ReplyDeleteChristianist? Man, she's got 'em stirred. She's absolutely right too in saying "really all of that stuff doesn't do any good if the people of Alaska's heart isn't right with God".
You can take a pig to the trough, but can't make him slop. If the people give over to drink, drugs, and promiscuous sex, nothing the government can do will help.
The World's Verdict Will Be Harsh If The US Rejects The Man It Longs For
My choice so far for dumbest article of the year.
How do the voters reject the man they long for.
Later.
...and w/O'Marxist:
ReplyDeleteBernadine Dohrn, Hillary Clinton, and Farrakahn.
There is no option in the realm of possibility that I prefer
ReplyDeleteAll that can be done is to watch in bemusement, doug.
A slow speed train wreck.
That nothing good will come of.
US ground troops to support the KLA in Kosovo, in 1999, doug.
That's Maverick at his norm.
Good Government trumps Constitutional Government.
The Obama option is even worse, to depend upon 40+ GOP Senators to defend the Republic from itself, discouraging at best.
They've shown no grit, yet.
If McCain loses, due to the Mexican vote, in CO and NM, then the defeat of Comprehensive Immigration Reform can be praised for maintaining the status que and the GOP losing the White House.
Because the Party would not stand by their candidate, as he put Country First.
Palin won't lose.
ReplyDeleteAnd John may die.
There's always hope.
The entire election boils down to that one word, doug
ReplyDeleteHOPE
As I dry off from my shower, my wife tells me, since I pay the taxes back there, I won't have any trouble getting registered to vote in Ohio.
ReplyDeleteI'm fully committed to the Palin/McCain ticket.
I'd drive 25 hundred miles, to vote for that women.
Gotta go.
You said that before.
ReplyDelete(Gotta Go)
Drive out here and prove it.
(2008-09-10) — In an attempt to get the mainstream media and the blogosphere to stop talking about Sarah Palin after Barack Obama’s now-famous “lipstick on a pig” gaffe, the Democrat presidential nominee attempted to direct attention to his remark just before the lipstick comment yesterday in which he used a line from a political cartoonist without attribution.
ReplyDelete“This is my campaign not Sarah Palin’s,” said Sen. Obama at a hastily-arranged news conference. “You people should be talking about me. Why don’t you jump on me for me ripping off Tom Toles, the Washington Post cartoonist, whose line I repeated almost word-for-word as if I had written it myself. Now, that’s a story!”
Sen. Obama called his use of the cartoonist’s work “an act of plagiarism reminiscent of Joe Biden” and complained that “journalists just let it pass so they could talk about Palin, pigs and lipstick. It’s time to bring change to the news media, and return to the days when Barack Obama was the always the big story.”
and
2008-09-10) — Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s growing popularity has spawned a booming cottage industry in Palin-esque items from hockey jerseys to her distinctive frameless eyeglasses. Now, an allegedly off-hand remark by Democrat presidential nominee Barack Obama has sparked a run on another product, clearing the shelves of pig lipstick at farm stores across the nation
Yesterday, Sen. Obama mocked the McCain-Palin ticket’s “maverick” claim, at one point noting that “you can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig“. An explosion of laughter from his audience on the word ‘lipstick’ seemed to indicate that many people recalled the punchline of Gov. Palin’s convention joke about the difference between a hockey Mom and a pitbull, and thought he was ridiculing her.
The combination of Sen. Obama’s ability to mesmerize a crowd, and Gov. Palin’s endearing personality almost-instantaneously revived a once-moribund market in domestic animal beauty products.
So, while the debate over whether Sen. Obama meant the comment as a slap at Gov. Palin continues, at least one maker of cosmetics for horses, cows, sheep and pigs — Wisconsin-based Haybelline — is wallowing in record sales, not only of pig lipstick, but of porcine cosmetics in general.
“We’ve been flooded with calls from retailers,” said an unnamed Haybelline spokesman. “All of the lipstick in our Passionate Pigment line is just gone, and stores are dangerously low on stocks of other products like mascara, blush and our classic sparkling snoutliner.”
The Haybelline source said the “the timing couldn’t be better” because the firm is about to launch a complete line of beauty products for use on wild animals, slain by hunters, which appear in trophy photos.
“I just got off the phone with our plant manager,” he said, “I told him to go round the clock on production of Magnificent Moose Mousse. I just have a gut feeling this is going to be big.”
Scott Ott
Laugh hearty, seeya.
THE SKY IS FALLING!
ReplyDeleteLifeofthemind said,
" Wretchard has created a community where people of varying backgrounds can do what the net promises and rarely delivers by safely bringing a variety of talents and experiences to examine a problem and literally create knew knowledge. As a long time member of this community I treasure the ability to share and gain from those who come here. The abusive conduct of Roy is disturbing not only because it drags into this Club the atmosphere of the streets but because it is a direct and deliberate assault on just those rules that make this place work. It is easy to ignore someone who resorts to torrents of abuse and slander however the presence of someone who is attempting to change the very fabric of the blog to expose persons to cyber bullying and threats is much more serious. Roy is attempting to bait me into revealing personal information which I do not do precisely because he is the person that I choose never to sully my life with. He had no legitimate reason to begin this with me at all. He is seeking for purely personal reasons to exclude a voice from the conversation because he wishes to determine the outcome of the debate. The only voices before today that I suggested blocking from the site were the open cut and paste agents of the Kremlin for wasting bandwidth. Roy’s attacks on the very fabric of this community are much more serious and I do ask Wretchard to consider what is in the best interests of his Club."
Ole' Roy
ReplyDeleteDog food brand at Walmart.
Never get to feed it here at the house, wife thinks the dogs will not like it. Give 'em a chance to like it, a choice, I say ...
But no Ole' Roy crosses our threashold.
I haven't been over to Wretchard's for awhile; but, this Roy, as defined, sounds a little bit like someone we've run into before, eh?
ReplyDeleteThe entire election boils down to that one word, doug
ReplyDeleteHOPE
==
Best stuck trading anthem evah!
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4hr1b_audiosurf-the-steve-miller-band-tak_videogames
:)
Should the US provide NATO Article 5 protections to Ukraine?
ReplyDeleteThe rest of NATO is a paper tiger with regards to Russia. Their contribution to combat in Sevastopol would be limited, at best, to hearty words of encouragement.
Should we all become Ukrainians, now, too?
Nationalist politicians, including Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, have repeatedly traveled to Crimea to show the flag and support the Russian irredentists -- many of them retired Russian military officers who periodically mount raucous demonstrations. In 2006, their protests forced the cancellation of the joint Ukraine-NATO Sea Breeze military exercises. Sevastopol was and should again be a Russian city," Mr. Luzhkov declared this past May, and the Moscow City Hall has appropriated $34 million for "the support of compatriots abroad" over the next three years. On Sept. 5, Ukraine's Foreign Minister Vladimir Ogryzko accused the Russian consulate in the Crimean capital of Simferopol of distributing Russian passports to the inhabitants of the peninsula.
With almost three-quarters of Sevastopol's 340,000 residents ethnically Russian, and 14,000 Russian Navy personnel already "on the inside" (they've been known to don civilian clothes and participate in demonstrations by Russian Crimean irredentists), an early morning operation in which the Ukrainian mayor and officials are deposed and arrested and the Russian flag hoisted over the city should not be especially hard to accomplish. Once established, Russian sovereignty over Sevastopol would be impossible to reverse without a large-scale war, which Ukraine will be most reluctant to initiate and its Western supporters would strongly discourage.
A potentially bolder (and likely bloodier) scenario might involve a provocation by the Moscow-funded, and perhaps armed, Russian nationalists (or the Russian special forces, spetznaz, posing as irredentists). They could declare Russian sovereignty over a smaller city (Alushta, Evpatoria, Anapa) or a stretch of inland territory. In response, Ukrainian armed forces based in the Crimea outside Sevastopol would likely counterattack. The ensuing bloodshed would provide Moscow with the interventionist excuse of protecting its compatriots -- this time, unlike in South Ossetia, ethnic Russians.
Whatever the operational specifics, the Russian political barometer seems to augur storms ahead.
Mr. Aron, director of Russian studies and resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, is the author, most recently, of "Russia's Revolution: Essays 1989-2006" (AEI Press, 2007).
Should the US provide NATO Article 5 protections to Ukraine?
ReplyDelete==
A: No.
Is granting Ukraine Article 5 status more dangerous than a tax increase?
ReplyDeleteI tend to think it is.
Makes McCain a tad more dangerous choice, long term.
Because, as Maverick demanded in Kosovo, with regards the KLA, he'll use Presidental prerogative to send in the troops.
Which would be an error, in any current envisioned windows of operations. The Russians will have the advatages of timing and momenteum. Interior supply lines and a sympathetic population base.
The US military that General Casey and the JCS thought was streeeched to the limits in late 2006 and early 2007 is even more in need of a refit now, than then.
Makes McCain a tad more dangerous choice, long term.
ReplyDelete==
Will be interesting to see who'll be Secretary of Defense.
My guess is that McCain will slash defense spending and readjust military commitments.
ReplyDeleteFuck The Pain Away--Sung By, Miss Piggy perezHilton
ReplyDeletedeuce and Whit--you guys got to check this out.
ReplyDeleteLadies and Gentlemen, lookie HERE
Obama, the smirker, flips off Hillary twice.
Well, I'm convinced, the guy really is a smart assed shit.
Time for Obama to resign.
ReplyDeleteObama plagiarized 'lipstick speech'
ReplyDeleteRemarks by Sen. Barack Obama yesterday leading up to his controversial "lipstick on a pig" jab at the McCain campaign mirror almost word-for-word a political cartoon published last week in the Washington Post.
We want Barry!
ReplyDeleteWe want Barry!