Biden to George Stephanopoulos: I'm the guy that put NATO together, I'm the guy that shut Putin down

 Joe was 6 when NATO was founded.

Putin is still in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, and we're still spending billion$ to stop him.

There's plenty of mendacity afoot on both sides, including from the isolationist click-farmers

 

New video clearly shows Russian beach was not targeted and was collateral damage after Russian defenses downed Ukrainian missile

 

 Here.

Russia warns the U.S. to brace for retaliation after Kremlin blamed Washington for missile attack that killed four in Crimea

 

Ukraine didn't target the beach in Crimea where Russians were collateral damage of Russian defense operations

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

  Video shows panicked beachgoers fleeing from falling shrapnel after Russian air defense intercepted the U.S.-supplied ATACMS missiles.

Don't sun on the beach in a war zone, unless you enjoy that sort of thing.

More.

Scott McConnell: Joe Biden has had his hair on fire for NATO enlargement since at least 1998

Anatol Lieven has pointed out that not a single hawk during the Reagan era (which today’s Democrats pretend to respect in counterpoint today’s America First Republicans) imagined bringing Crimea under NATO jurisdiction and evicting the Russian fleet from Sevastopol would be a desirable or feasible goal for the West. ...

 

One can go back to the 1998 Senate debate over NATO enlargement, won inevitably by the side promising greater profits for the military industrial complex, to see its contours. That debate was spirited, and we might take solace from the fact (unlike the present) that it took place at all. 

Opposing NATO expansion, Senator Daniel Moynihan, the last intellectual in American politics, warned “We’re walking into ethnic historical enmities. We have no idea what we’re getting into.” Taking Moynihan’s side, Republican senator John Warner of Virginia warned of antagonizing Russia by building an “iron ring” around it. And from whom came the most strident objection to Warner and Moynihan? According to the New York Times, Joseph Biden, “took the floor and erupted…stalking the Senate floor, flailing his arms….” 

More.

Ron DeSantis missteps, tries to weasel out of his characterization of the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a "territorial dispute"

One message for Tucker Carlson viewers, another for "neocons".

But trying to thread that needle is a fool's errand.

Ron DeSantis obviously isn't ready for this yet. No one thinks any part of Ukraine is Russian territory, especially since Russia agreed to the new borders in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum.

DeSantis could elevate himself by pointing out that Ukraine also pledged itself to neutrality in that agreement, and that Ukraine should return to that position instead of seeking EU and NATO membership.

Unfortunately, it appears that DeSantis, and the rest of the field, needs to let Trump become the candidate and lose again in order to cleanse the GOP of Trump once and for all. 

DeSantis would be better positioned for 2028 anyway, when the Russia-Ukraine conflict enters its sixth year, at which time he can better Monday morning quarterback the whole thing. He will turn 50 in 2028. He has time. He needs time.

'Well, I think it's been mischaracterized. Obviously, Russia invaded — that was wrong. They invaded Crimea and took that in 2014 — That was wrong,' DeSantis told Piers Morgan in an interview more than a week after his initial comments. ...

'What I'm referring to is where the fighting is going on now which is that eastern border region Donbas, and then Crimea, and you have a situation where Russia has had that. I don't think legitimately but they had,' he said.

More.

GOP candidate positions on Ukraine demonstrate nothing but groveling to the anti-war right

 And the kernel there is pretending things that are not true, the mark of an unserious country.

Nikki Haley is simply incoherent. She says we have to win this war, but without more financial assistance. 

“I don’t think we need to put money in Ukraine,” Haley said last week before an audience in Iowa. ... “This is not a war about Ukraine, this is a war about freedom—and it’s one that we have to win,” Haley said. “If we win this war, this will send a message to China, it will send a message to Iran, it will send a message to North Korea, it will send a message to Russia. If we lose this war… they said Poland and the Baltics are next, and you’re looking at a world war.”

Ron DeSantis pretends Russia never invaded and simply has a territorial dispute with Ukraine.

“While the U.S. has many vital national interests—securing our borders, addressing the crisis of readiness within our military, achieving energy security and independence, and checking the economic, cultural, and military power of the Chinese Communist Party—becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them,” DeSantis told Fox News host Tucker Carlson this week.

And The Daily Beast isn't wrong about Donald Trump's position, who to this day touts the myth that he is some great deal-maker who can untie the Gordian Knot:

Former President Donald Trump has said he would have let Russia “take over” parts of Ukraine if he were still in the White House.

It is also the case that there is plenty of pretending on the other side, that the West wasn't responsible for the Ukrainian revolution of 2014 which ultimately provoked the current conflict.

Statesmen tell hard truths to their people. But none of ours seem capable of telling even the simple ones, including Joe Biden.

Democrats underestimate the power of Crimea as a political liability

 

GOP Overestimates Power of Crime as a Political Issue

Walter Shapiro, New Republic

 

AOC Receives Backlash At Town Hall: "You're Voting To Start A Nuclear War With Russia And China"; "You're Establishment"

Tucker Carlson is another one who thinks America will be to blame for a Russian invasion of Ukraine, omitting certain uncomfortable truths

 https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2021/12/08/tucker_carlson_ukrainian_lobbyists_have_all_of_washington_heading_for_war.html

Tucker omits that Russia lost the Sevastopol naval base to Ukraine from 1991-2014 after the fall of the USSR, after which Putin took it back by force in the annexation of Crimea, an act of aggression unanswered by Obama. But Russia had paid rent to Ukraine for use of the base during that intervening period. It's not like they were or are entitled to it, Tucker.

George W. Bush set the precedent for all that in the first place by not answering Russia's aggression in South Ossetia in 2008.

Tucker also omits that Germany is hostage to Russian natural gas by choice, having embraced the madness of green ideology and abandoning their own sources of energy.

This spirit and habit of appeasement shouldn't be continued or encouraged, especially one in the service of a banal, libertarian, materialistic understanding of "American interests".

Russia stole George W. Bush's balls when they invaded South Osetia and used those to invade Crimea

Politico's real story from January was that the DNC, the Hillary campaign, Alexandra Chalupa, Rep. Marcy Kaptur, journalists, government officials and intelligence operatives all colluded with Ukraine to take out Manafort and disrupt Trump's campaign

You should read it to appreciate the four fingers pointing back at the Democrats every time they point at Republicans yelling "collusion".

The whole article was designed to run interference for Chalupa and the Democrats, putting the best spin on it they could after uncovering the dirty details. The heart of the story begins seventeen paragraphs in, after trying in the first sixteen to make what follows not say what it says, here:

The Ukrainian efforts had an impact in the race, helping to force Manafort’s resignation and advancing the narrative that Trump’s campaign was deeply connected to Ukraine’s foe to the east, Russia. ...

Manafort’s work for Yanukovych caught the attention of a veteran Democratic operative named Alexandra Chalupa, who had worked in the White House Office of Public Liaison during the Clinton administration. Chalupa went on to work as a staffer, then as a consultant, for Democratic National Committee. The DNC paid her $412,000 from 2004 to June 2016, according to Federal Election Commission records, though she also was paid by other clients during that time, including Democratic campaigns and the DNC’s arm for engaging expatriate Democrats around the world.

In an interview this month, Chalupa told Politico she had developed a network of sources in Kiev and Washington, including investigative journalists, government officials and private intelligence operatives. While her consulting work at the DNC this past election cycle centered on mobilizing ethnic communities — including Ukrainian-Americans — she said that, when Trump’s unlikely presidential campaign began surging in late 2015, she began focusing more on the research, and expanded it to include Trump’s ties to Russia, as well.

She occasionally shared her findings with officials from the DNC and Clinton’s campaign, Chalupa said. In January 2016 — months before Manafort had taken any role in Trump’s campaign — Chalupa told a senior DNC official that, when it came to Trump’s campaign, “I felt there was a Russia connection,” Chalupa recalled. “And that, if there was, that we can expect Paul Manafort to be involved in this election,” said Chalupa, who at the time also was warning leaders in the Ukrainian-American community that Manafort was “Putin’s political brain for manipulating U.S. foreign policy and elections.”

She said she shared her concern with Ukraine’s ambassador to the U.S., Valeriy Chaly, and one of his top aides, Oksana Shulyar, during a March 2016 meeting at the Ukrainian Embassy. According to someone briefed on the meeting, Chaly said that Manafort was very much on his radar, but that he wasn’t particularly concerned about the operative’s ties to Trump since he didn’t believe Trump stood much of a chance of winning the GOP nomination, let alone the presidency.

That all started to change just four days after Chalupa’s meeting at the embassy, when it was reported that Trump had in fact hired Manafort, suggesting that Chalupa may have been on to something. She quickly found herself in high demand. The day after Manafort’s hiring was revealed, she briefed the DNC’s communications staff on Manafort, Trump and their ties to Russia, according to an operative familiar with the situation. ...

Chalupa asked embassy staff to try to arrange an interview in which Poroshenko might discuss Manafort’s ties to Yanukovych. While the embassy declined that request, officials there became “helpful” in Chalupa’s efforts, she said, explaining that she traded information and leads with them. “If I asked a question, they would provide guidance, or if there was someone I needed to follow up with.” But she stressed, “There were no documents given, nothing like that.”

Chalupa said the embassy also worked directly with reporters researching Trump, Manafort and Russia to point them in the right directions. ...

Andrii Telizhenko, who worked as a political officer in the Ukrainian Embassy under Shulyar, said [Shulyar] instructed him to help Chalupa research connections between Trump, Manafort and Russia. “Oksana said that if I had any information, or knew other people who did, then I should contact Chalupa,” recalled Telizhenko, who is now a political consultant in Kiev. “They were coordinating an investigation with the Hillary team on Paul Manafort with Alexandra Chalupa,” he said, adding “Oksana was keeping it all quiet,” but “the embassy worked very closely with” Chalupa.

In fact, sources familiar with the effort say that Shulyar specifically called Telizhenko into a meeting with Chalupa to provide an update on an American media outlet’s ongoing investigation into Manafort.

Telizhenko recalled that Chalupa told him and Shulyar that, “If we can get enough information on Paul [Manafort] or Trump’s involvement with Russia, she can get a hearing in Congress by September.”

Chalupa confirmed that, a week after Manafort’s hiring was announced, she discussed the possibility of a congressional investigation with a foreign policy legislative assistant in the office of Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), who co-chairs the Congressional Ukrainian Caucus. But, Chalupa said, “It didn’t go anywhere.”

Asked about the effort, the Kaptur legislative assistant called it a “touchy subject” in an internal email to colleagues that was accidentally forwarded to Politico.

Kaptur’s office later emailed an official statement explaining that the lawmaker is backing a bill to create an independent commission to investigate “possible outside interference in our elections.” The office added “at this time, the evidence related to this matter points to Russia, but Congresswoman Kaptur is concerned with any evidence of foreign entities interfering in our elections.” ...

In [an] email [released by Wikileaks], which was sent in early May to then-DNC communications director Luis Miranda, Chalupa noted that she had extended an invitation to the Library of Congress forum to veteran Washington investigative reporter Michael Isikoff. Two days before the event, he had published a story for Yahoo News revealing the unraveling of a $26 million deal between Manafort and a Russian oligarch related to a telecommunications venture in Ukraine. And Chalupa wrote in the email she’d been “working with for the past few weeks” with Isikoff “and connected him to the Ukrainians” at the event.

Isikoff, who accompanied Chalupa to a reception at the Ukrainian Embassy immediately after the Library of Congress event, declined to comment.

Chalupa further indicated in her hacked May email to the DNC that she had additional sensitive information about Manafort that she intended to share “offline” with Miranda and DNC research director Lauren Dillon, including “a big Trump component you and Lauren need to be aware of that will hit in next few weeks and something I’m working on you should be aware of.” Explaining that she didn’t feel comfortable sharing the intel over email, Chalupa attached a screenshot of a warning from Yahoo administrators about “state-sponsored” hacking on her account, explaining, “Since I started digging into Manafort these messages have been a daily occurrence on my yahoo account despite changing my password often.”

Dillon and Miranda declined to comment. ...

The [Financial Times] noted that Trump’s candidacy had spurred “Kiev’s wider political leadership to do something they would never have attempted before: intervene, however indirectly, in a U.S. election,” and the story quoted Leshchenko [Ukraine's parliamentarian] asserting that the majority of Ukraine’s politicians are “on Hillary Clinton’s side.” ...

[A]n operative who has worked extensively in Ukraine, including as an adviser to Poroshenko, said it was highly unlikely that either Leshchenko or the anti-corruption bureau would have pushed the issue without at least tacit approval from Poroshenko or his closest allies.

“It was something that Poroshenko was probably aware of and could have stopped if he wanted to,” said the operative. ...

Telizhenko, the former embassy staffer, said that, during the primaries, Chaly, the country’s ambassador in Washington, had actually instructed the embassy not to reach out to Trump’s campaign, even as it was engaging with those of Clinton and Trump’s leading GOP rival, Ted Cruz.

“We had an order not to talk to the Trump team, because he was critical of Ukraine and the government and his critical position on Crimea and the conflict,” said Telizhenko. “I was yelled at when I proposed to talk to Trump,” he said, adding, “The ambassador said not to get involved — Hillary is going to win.”

This account was confirmed by Nalyvaichenko, the former diplomat and security chief now affiliated with a Poroshenko opponent, who said, “The Ukrainian authorities closed all doors and windows — this is from the Ukrainian side.” He called the strategy “bad and short-sighted.”

Andriy Artemenko, a Ukrainian parliamentarian associated with a conservative opposition party, did meet with Trump’s team during the campaign and said he personally offered to set up similar meetings for Chaly but was rebuffed.

“It was clear that they were supporting Hillary Clinton’s candidacy,” Artemenko said. “They did everything from organizing meetings with the Clinton team, to publicly supporting her, to criticizing Trump. … I think that they simply didn’t meet because they thought that Hillary would win.”

Rep. Maxine Waters strikes again, says Putin invaded Korea

Korea, Crimea, Gonorrhea, they're all the same to this box of rocks.

Story here.

In case you didn't get it the first time, Vladimir Putin thinks the CIA behind the Trump smear . . .

. . . is the same CIA which overthrew the democratically elected but pro-Russian Viktor Yanukovych, president of Ukraine, in 2014.

Not coincidentally, John McCain was the US point man in the overthrow effort: "John McCain backs opposition leaders telling Ukraine protesters: 'America stands with you - Ukraine will make Europe better'".

Democracy is only OK if it's pro-Western, you see.

Secretary of State nominee Rex Tillerson throws down the gauntlet in South China Sea

Hooah Rex!

From the story here:

In comments expected to enrage Beijing, Rex Tillerson told his confirmation hearing before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee that China's building of islands and putting military assets on those islands was "akin to Russia's taking Crimea" from Ukraine.

Asked whether he supported a more aggressive posture toward China, he said: "We're going to have to send China a clear signal that, first, the island-building stops and, second, your access to those islands also is not going to be allowed." ... 

Tillerson called China's South China Sea island-building and declaration of an air defense zone in waters of the East China Sea it contests with Japan "illegal actions."

"They're taking territory or control, or declaring control of territories that are not rightfully China's," he said.

Crimean Regional Parliament Votes Unanimously To Join The Russian Federation

So reports the BBC here (you wouldn't know it was unanimous from US news stories):

11:27: To recap:

• Members of Crimea's regional parliament have voted unanimously to make Crimea part of Russia
• The plan will be put to a referendum on 16 March, when the majority Russian-speaking population is expected to approve it
• The parliament does not officially have power to do this, but the peninsula is still in effect under Russian control
• An advisor to the Russian government has told the BBC the Kremlin is unlikely to stand in the way of a referendum

Is Crimea Payback For Cyprus?

I haven't heard anyone say this yet, but Russians lost a lot of money when the EU "bailed out" Cyprus by bailing it in. More to the point, the EU confiscated 40% of deposits in Cyprus banks in excess of 100,000 euros, which hit a lot of rich Russian depositors pretty hard. It was another example of EU overreach in the opinion of Russians, something of which the West has been very dismissive but which Putin has indicated will not fly anymore as early as 2008, and proved it when he annexed South Ossetia during the Olympic Games in China.

Crimea was a perfect opportunity for a little payback for Cyprus, considering that the US has been trying to push Ukraine into the arms of the EU, most recently when Senators John McCain and Chris Murphy visited Ukraine in December and threatened the country with sanctions if it did not ally with the West.

From Putin's perspective, the EU means losses for Russia. American policy isn't taking that seriously enough, because if it were Putin wouldn't need to resort to arms.

S&P500 Vaults 14 Points Above The Last High One Day After Crimean Invasion By Russia

War is the father of everything.

Drudge Is Just A Sensationalist Tabloid, Not In The Grocery Story Aisle But On The Internet

Everyone who reads the stories Drudge links to can perceive instantly that Drudge's headlines often are purely sensationalist and sometimes down right misleading, often in the extreme.

Today is a good example.

The story Drudge links to here via Reuters clearly states up front in the second paragraph that the US knew in advance of today's test. The test was not an exclamation point added at the end of the sentence about the Crimean invasion:

A U.S. official said the United States had received proper notification from Russia ahead of the test and that the initial notification pre-dated the crisis in Crimea. The Russian Defence Ministry could not be reached for comment.

Russia performs due diligence and informs us of these tests well in advance. Today's test was a good example. But Drudge plays it up differently nevertheless, as if Russia were sending us a message.

Wikileaks proved Russia has been warning the West about expanding NATO too closely to Russia's borders since at least 2008. Russia's action in Crimea should not have come as a surprise to anyone who has a sense of history or pays attention to the long record of Russian protests against European encroachments on its borders since the fall of the Soviet Union.

The sad part of this is that the radio talkers like Laura Ingraham, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and even Michael Savage take their lead from Drudge's headlines. At least Savage often brings a critical perspective to bear upon these stories, as does Ingraham to a lesser extent. But overall the tyranny of Drudge over the news cycle on the right is plain for anyone to see. Its memes become the fodder of the juggernaut of uninformed opinion to which we are all now hostage in the age of instant everything.

Stock Markets Are Casinos Of Sentiment Easily Swayed By Important Global Events Like The Crimean Invasion

Markets tank less than 1% on Russia's Crimean invasion . . .

. . . then they recover all that and then some the day after.

The Russian Invasion Of Georgia In 2008 Was A Warning To The West To Stop Expanding NATO Into Russia's Backyard, But We Ignore This Up To The Present Day

US foreign policy under Bush and Obama has ignored Russia's intentions to reassert its influence and control in regions populated with Russians.

Bloomberg reports here:

Putin has been warning the U.S. and other North Atlantic Treaty Organization states for at least six years not to impede Russian interests in Ukraine, particularly in Crimea, where the Black Sea Fleet has been based since its founding by Catherine the Great in 1783 after the Ottoman Empire ceded the peninsula.

Putin told a closed NATO summit in Romania in 2008 that the military alliance was threatening Ukraine’s very existence by courting it as a member, according to a secret cable published by Wikileaks. Putin said Ukraine’s borders were “sewn together” after World War II and its claims to Crimea, which belonged to Russia until Nikita Khrushchev gave it to Ukraine in 1954, are legally dubious, Kurt Volker, the U.S. ambassador to NATO at the time, said in the cable.

Four months later, Putin demonstrated his willingness to back up words with actions by sending Russian troops to war against Georgia, another former Soviet state, over two Russian-speaking regions seeking independence.