There's a lot going on out there, but not enough on any one issue to motivate me to speak at length on the subject. So today is a potpourri of political perspectives. You're welcome for the alliteration.
The crisis in Ukraine is interesting from a historical perspective, what with its echoes of the Sudetenland in 1938. Sure, Mr. Putin's playing chess while Mr. Obama is twiddling his thumbs. But is there any realistic response that the world can make that would get Russia to back off/
For an election result of 95% in favor of joining Russia to be credible, absolute transparency is required. There was no such thing, and the election was held so fast there couldn't be absolute transparency. It would appear that Russia seeks to reassemble the old Soviet Union.
Militarily, there is little the West can do. Moscow has superior interior lines which would make military intervention logistically challenging at best and at worst a disaster in the making. Unfortunately, the only real solution to this lies in the ballot box without Chicago-style politics. Unfortunately, the old Soviet regime taught Richard J. Daley everything he knows, and Mr. Putin descends from that tree.
Ukraine, unfortunately, is on his own.
Listening to the empty threats made by the Three Stooges -- John Kerry, Joe Biden and Barack Obama -- only confirms that.
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Meanwhile, Mr. Obama is preoccupied with the disaster of his own making, Obamacare. Only eleven days remain for sign-ups for the program, and at this date, the stated goal of seven million enrollees is far short by about 2.8 million. So now the White House is going to its Hollywood connections for help.
It's comforting to know that we had to wait to pass the bill before we could find out what was in it. Now that we know what's in it, and people aren't comforted by all the broken promises, higher premiums and lost or unnecessary coverages, it's amazing anyone signed up for it at all. Then again, considering all the partisans who comprise most of those 4.2 million enrollees, perhaps the only amazing thing is that there aren't more of them signed up. After all, there were many more than 4.2 million people that reelected Mr. Obama.
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Recently there was an announcement that the government was reducing the size of our military. There were a number of things wrong with this.
First, from a historical perspective, anytime we announce we're cutting our military, flare-ups occur around the globe. After World War I we downsized, and there were brush fires in Latin America and Eastern Europe. As a result, we were woefully unprepared for World War II. Then, after World War II, we downsized again, only to be met with the Korean Conflict. After that, we downsized just in time for the Vietnam War to take off. After Vietnam, there was about a decade of relative peace until the Gulf War. Since we've been engaged since then in various conflicts. Now Mr. Obama sees us withdrawing from Afghanistan, despite the fact that a vacuum will result and the inevitable cycle will be revisited.
Second, is it any surprise that Mr. Putin initiated his Ukrainian incursion mere weeks after the announcement?
Third, doesn't anyone in Washington realize that the one thing Islamofascists respect is might?
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There is a need to cut waste across the board with government spending. Certainly, there is waste in the military. But why are we only going to give military families a one percent raise when Mr. Obama wants civilians working as contractors with the military to get almost a thirty-three percent raise in the minimum wage? What does that tell our men and women in uniform? Does anyone realize how many Democrats voted in favor of this?
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That nitwit Eric Holder wants convicted felons to regain their voting privileges upon their release from jail. I'm actually on the fence about this. On the one hand, if the goal of incarceration is to rehabilitate convicts, what does it say about our system that we don't trust them upon their release to vote? By the same token, do we want convicted murderers and rapists voting? I think we should hold with our word when it comes to those who have paid their debt to society and allow them to vote. The only convicts who shouldn't be allowed to vote are those convicted of treason, but most of those felons are in for life anyway.
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I thought Dana Perino got off a great line on a recent The Five episode where liberals' criticism of CPAC was discussed. She noted that liberals just had two such meetings of their own that go by the names of the Golden Globes and the Oscars.
How true that is.
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States are enacting legislation requiring registration of guns. Gunowners are balking, as are sheriff departments and even state legislatures, such as Idaho. It's going to be interesting to see how Mr. Holder's dictum to states attorneys general about choosing to ignore enforcement of certain of their laws comes back to haunt him. In the case of Idaho, if the state's attorney general decides to enforce the state law requiring him to ignore a federal registration law, will this go to the Supreme Court? Quite probably. And if it does, that may very well be the death knell for the gun control movement.
(c) 2014 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles
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