U.S. Weakness Creating Power Vacuum

cobber wrote: Hi Medclinician, Please don't drink the fox media coolaid. There news is radically bias and is pretty much a propaganda mouth piece. Most of their news is either not truthful or seriously distorted to fit an agenda.  Don't believe me, try googling fox bias, fox propaganda or something similar

I am familiar with Fox Network. During the last Pandemic it was one of the few places I could get accurate figures of the flu in New York which was reported to infect 52,000 people by .gov and actually there were 500,000 people hit by it. 

So far, the reports of the dangers of Russia attacking the Ukraine as reported are still very accurate. Take this story...

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/03/27/hill-republicans-urge-obama-to-take-firm-stance-against-russia-in-ukraine/

Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday strongly urged President Obama to take a firmer stance against Russia in light of the Ukraine crisis and amid increasing disquiet on Capitol Hill about what Moscow's next move might be. 

The letter, authored by eight congressmen, comes after U.S. and European security agencies estimated that Russia has deployed military and militia units totaling more than 30,000 people along its border with eastern Ukraine, Reuters reported.

The letter's authors say they are "gravely concerned" about the reported troop buildup, and urges the Obama administration to work with NATO allies to share intelligence with the Ukrainian government so they can prepare for any further incursions by Russia. They also claim the presence of Russian special forces formenting civil unrest in eastern Ukraine, and the presence of Russian naval forces and coastal troops in the Baltic.

"There is deep apprehension that Moscow may invade eastern and southern Ukraine, pressing west to Transdniestria, and also seek land grabs in the Baltics," the letter says.

comment: What I find particularly disturbing is the absolute control of CNN and headline stories that may be featured are oblivious to far more serious issues in the world and U.S.

These are the top stories in addition to the continued running story of the  missing airliner with no solid proof recovered other than debris pictures from a satellite which could be anything.

Look at this--

• NTSB: O'Hare train crash driver asleep
• Landslide survivors' stories | Photos
• 'She's down there under the mud'  
• Ukraine military dolphins to flip sides
• Ukraine's far-right leader killed  
• Obama, Pope Francis meet for first time
• FBI hunts suspect in mother, son deaths
• 8 myths about 2014 NFL Draft

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(CNN) -- Just when you thought this divorce couldn't get any messier.

Weeks after Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimea region, it plans to take custody of dolphins in the nation as well.

Not just any dolphins. These highly trained military mammals detect risks such as sea mines or enemy scuba divers trying to slip through. Sea mines are sophisticated weapons that can sink ships and other watercraft.

"The combat dolphin program in the Crimean city of Sevastopol will be preserved and redirected toward the interests of the Russian navy,"

comment: The Russian military are massing at the border to East Ukraine and CNN is publishing stories about military dolphins. Syria is a mess. Iran is a mess. Pakistan and Afghanistan are a disaster and China is targeting and claiming new territory as the U.S. mumbles about possible sanctions as three military bases fall in Ukraine.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/03/26/fox-news-poll-country-weaker-under-obama-not-tough-enough-on-russia/

Some 52 percent of voters think the country is weaker and less powerful today than it was six years ago.  That’s three times the 17 percent who say the country is stronger and more powerful.  About 3 in 10 think it is unchanged (29 percent). 

Last year, 48 percent said weaker, 24 percent stronger and 27 percent unchanged (Feb. 2013).

The number of Democrats saying the country is stronger now has dropped 11 percentage points:  it’s 32 percent today, down from 43 percent in 2013.  Twenty-two percent of Democrats say the country is weaker and 44 percent say it is the same. 

Views among Republicans are lopsided: 78 percent say the country is weaker under Obama vs. five percent stronger. 

comment: An ineffective NATO and failure to deal with Russia as it poises to grab the Ukraine has created a power vacuum and Russia, China, and even North Korea seek to fill it with blatant imperialism and expansion.   The bias on Foxis primarily right wing slant versus democrat and of course Obama being a democrat cries foul the loudest.

Fox will report stories that others are not reporting. When I am looking for news on anything the Democrats have bungled it is up on Fox including in depth coverage on the Ukraine versus plain vanilla stories  on CNN.  "Hard core" news is just that. It is up the the individual to take the news stories and recheck their validity. I have no reason to believe the Russians are not massing attack forces on their borders. Since Putin idolizes Peter the Great who was the Alexander the Great of Russia , this has made him very popular. Expect more of the same.

http://www.disseminated.net/free/research/freepapers/peter.htm

One of the ways in which he bettered Russia was that he expanded their land. Land expansion meant that Russia became bigger that the rest of Europe and Russia now had sea and fresh water ports important for trade.

Comment: Was the taking of Sevastopol not like Peter the Great it being a warm water port?

Who does the current president in the U.S. have as  role models?

http://politix.topix.com/story/7362-athletes-should-be-role-models-says-obama

Football players who even travel abroad to try and convince foreign leaders with no experience at all in foreign policy often and zero effect on world politics Obama said should be role models. The focus is to generate popularity in a targeted group for votes rather than emulating famous men such as Roosevelt or Kennedy who effectively saved the U.S. despite criticism and even current bashing of Abraham Lincoln.

These are my role models. Even Washington who led a charge and was shot at and his clothing riddled with bullet holes. Brave and daring military leaders with combat experience to lead a country near to or in a war.  

conclusion: Fox is biased and some its stories are trash.  CNN is controlled just as much by democrats as Fox is by Republicans. Two views and readers have to use their own wisdom to separate truth from fiction.  Today I learned about Russia preparing to invade the Ukraine in Fox News.

The word Russia is absent from the entire main page of CNN when it could be one of the greatest threats to us in the world.  I thank you for your comment which inspired this post. There are two sides to every story and sometimes one must read them both to find the truth. Thank you for yours.

Medclinician

Dutch Josh,I had no idea where you lived. But .yes there have been many wars fought in your back yard and there will be many more.Wars have always rolled across Europe and they always will.The Russians taking the Crimea proves that and they will take the rest of the Ukraine next. Next,they will flip a coin to see if Poland or what other country they will take next. Aggression has to be stopped where and when it has started. WW II should have taught all of us this.-----Have you thought about immigrating to the US or Canada.I am not being a smart***,but we do not have the history of a major war every generation or so. At least know that if war is heading for your backyard,that me and most male relatives of mine will be there to help keep it out of your area. But with the President that we have now,Russia has pretty much a free hand for the next couple of years.  Good Luck. Johnray1

Dutch Josh - - I had the pleasure of living in the vicinity of Brunssum in South Limburg, The Netherlands for 12 years. Thanks to the Dutch people for taking care of the US Cemetery at Margraten.

The IMF might be doing a job that Putin can finish. "Reforms for aid" means taxrises, lower incomes, paying debt and interest for a very long time. Obama claims that the IMF-support will make the Ukraine another Poland (that is doing quite well economicly). But this is another time and the Ukraine is not next to Germany, the economic motor of Europe. 

@Seawolfe this might be interesting for you; http://www.gelderlander.nl/extra/blogs/the-crossing-engels In Nijmegen they named a new bridge "the crossing"referring to US-troops in 1944. You were in AFCENT-brunssum, hope you did not get problems with the asbestos in that HQ ! At Margraten and other war cemetaries children are expected to look after the wargraves. Confronted with the graves of that many, mostly young, men who once hoped to live in peace and start a family it makes you realize that living in peacetime is being blessed !

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/04/04/senators-russia-eyeing-land-grabs-in-moldova-georgia/?intcmp=latestnews

Senators say the White House must take immediate steps to stop Russia from seizing more territory from post-Soviet states, including Moldova and Georgia. 

U.S. intelligence officials have warned senators that Russian President Vladimir Putin is well positioned to send troops into Moldova and Georgia following his successful annexation of Ukraine's Crimea region. 

The information led Sen. Jim Inhofe (R., Okla.) to pen a resolution on Wednesday that warns Russia against invading Moldova and demands that it remove some 1,200 troops and military stockpiles it has stationed in the country. 

The resolution, which will be formally introduced in the Senate Thursday evening, has already attracted the support of Sens. Mark Kirk (R., Ill.), Saxby Chambliss (R., Ga.), Deb Fischer (R., Neb.), and Tom Coburn (R., Okla.), according to a Senate source tracking the bill. 

comment: The crisis is far from over and Russia is positioning herself to invade more countries and take more land.

Medclinician

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/04/26/obama-hashtag-diplomacy-with-russia-sparks-new-criticism-about-weak-foreign/?intcmp=latestnews

The situation has continued to escalate with pro-Russian groups taking over government buildings and establishing roadblocks, which Western allies say has been inspired by Moscow operatives in the region. In addition, a recent United Nations-backed peace treaty was violated over Easter weekend with a fatal shooting attack at a checkpoint.

Former Arkansas Gov. and potential 2016 GOP president candidate Mike Huckabee on Saturday also criticized the Psaki tweet.

“The thought that somebody would come at him with 160 characters is absolutely terrifying to Vladimir Putin,” Huckabee, who also is a Fox News contributor, said mockingly.

The United States has imposed some sanctions on Russia. But on Friday, Obama and other Western leaders decide to wait on imposing additional ones.

"I think it's important for us not to anticipate that the targeted sanctions that we're applying now necessarily solve the problem," Obama said in a news conference in South Korea.

Criticism about Obama having a weak foreign policy strategy is not limited to conservatives.

New York Times critic David Brooks said this week on NBC’s “Meet the Press”: “Let's face it Obama whether deservedly or not does have a -- I'll say it crudely -- but a manhood problem in the Middle East.

“Is he tough enough to stand up to somebody like [Syrian President Bashar] Assad, somebody like Putin -- and I think a lot of the rap is unfair but certainly in the Middle East there is an assumption it's not tough enough.”

comment: No idea the thought process or absence of one being used to threaten Putin with a line of text when we need an army in the Ukraine and there is no plan to send one there by anyone. Putin will continue to land grab until he is stopped. This likely to go into the Baltic states and a recent incursion of Russian jets in Dutch and British airspace does not ease the tension in the world. 

http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/23/world/europe/russian-bombers-intercepted/index.html

The most recent criticism followed a tweet late Thursday by State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki.

“The world stands #UnitedforUkraine. Let’s hope that the #Kremlin & @mfa Russia will live by the promise of hashtag,” she posted.

The tweet apparently was in response to Russia using the hashtag -- which essentially brings like-minded tweets into a collective batch -- to further its own agenda on social media.

US-weakness comes from an invasion in Iraq based upon lies, bringing to power a pro-Iranian government in Baghdad. After giving aid to Islamic radicals fighting the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and not forseeing that those "Taliban"might win and form a new government. It is not only US weakness, it is "the west" with moral values that have brought missery in Latin America based on Friedmann-economics, an IMF that is ideological blind in claiming that the best government is no government laying the foundation for new slave-labor as a "free-market-model". 

It is quite possible, much as the peasants shrugged their shoulders as the grand armies paraded through the streets, it made little difference.  Kingdoms rise and fall and there is often  little difference between them except for who is paid taxes, how much, and who owns the land.

Perhaps we do have paper dragons in that no leader, however notorius  over hundreds of years, will matter. Few of the world conquerors have done anything which lasted more than this long- a few centuries except for pharoahs and religious leaders.  Even America is young. It does not have the old world feel of Europe, Japan, or China.  Our dance on the world stage presently is embarrasing and if Russia takes a half-dozen more countries, it will be even less important.

The greatest danger is indifferencce and resolution to a grim situation and a feeling of helplessness in the face of a carnival of errors and poor foreign policy.

There have always been  power vacuums and there always will be. It is simply who in the world fills them and who does not.

Medclinician

This is not a new thing. Nope, as Rome cannot be built in a day, despite the sound of a violin playing on the terrace,  it cannot fall in a day either. It took time to completely ruin our status in the world of foreign policy. 

I could have told you as I watched Lawrence of Arabia with El Lawrence talking to the Bedouins, that weakness and the serious absence of a big stick, would set us back decades. 

To the tune of We Don't Need Another Hero - only with the lyrics changed (Tina Turner) we need a hero now more than ever.

So I watched a Fox news special where they pretty much spelled out what I have been saying for a very long time.

These are dangerous times. The U.S. climbed to its apex when the nuclear bomb went off in World War II. It only took 2. That was it. Game Over.  As the technology was stolen and we have gone through 80 years of Spys R Us - and some of the most catastrophic moles who were even in charge of the investigation to find them, we are losing our edge. With offshore money, American jobs gone as other countries make goods and we have a huge trade deficit and our stock market is anything but stable, it is a mess of huge proportions.

Who is going to fix it?  Well - the power vacuum extends to congress in the U.S. which has become so corrupt, so lobbied, and does not represent the people, only the corporations and the big doctor, drug, insurance megapower.  People have less faith in congress than the Administration, and that is far below with the adjusted polls say it is.

Can we make it another year with tactical errors of this magnitude? 

Things are getting creepy in the U.S. We have crazy people killing others in mass shootings and killing sprees. Is there a single person running for the next election that we could be proud of to be our president such as a Kennedy or a Lincoln?  Where have all the leaders gone?

As far as war goes- as far as foreign policy - we don't need another lawyer - we need a general - a warrior - one thing is for certain - someone will rise out of the sea of politics and once more rally the people and lead us to victory... we can hope - not talking about revolution here - talking about common sense.

Medclinician