You've proved you are incapable of thinking sensibly...no common sense proven by the total nonsense of your opening post. So rude to point it out when it's so obvious it doesn't need comment.

By the way, US taxpayers aren't going to give Ukraine the 15 billion...the European Union has committed to do that. Or don't you keep up with the news? :lol: :roll: So your opening nonsense and your Ukraine blame-O propaganda were falsity to begin with.

Question--Are you a Ron Paul fan who opposes our role as world leader and commitment to action supporting freedom and self-government throughout the world? Is that the purpose behind your posting of this Ukraine anti-action propaganda? Pardon me for pointing out that you are propagandizing for Putin and Russia and against America's interests. Your insane partisanship has made you into something of a putt puttt Puttttin puppet. :roll: :roll: :mrgreen:

It seems to me we are talking in terms of absolutes, when the situation is very fluid and ambiguous. Yes, there is much at stake for us and the future of freedom and self-government. Yes, there are limits to what we can do. Yes, Russia has a direct geopolitical interest in Crimea and Ukraine. Yes, the European Union also has a direct geopolitical interest in Ukraine. All outside parties have geopolitical and economic interests at stake.

However, Ukraine is the direct party affected whose interests should have first consideration. Russia is the outside party who has taken military action into Ukraine in its own interest. Please note that we, too, sent forces into Cuba in that Cold War confrontation on our doorstep, but we accepted in the end the existence of Russian-allied Cuba. The Cold War is now a generation past but Russian and European geopolitical situation continues toward either confrontation or accommodation. At stake perhaps is future t***sition of Russia to more freedom and lawful self-government and integration into the free world community OR move toward an assertive nationalism tyranny and leadership of an anti-West global faction.

So we do what we can (which has limitations) in the Ukraine situation in the interest of Ukraine and Europe and the future of freedom and self-government. We should refrain from making this the occasion for Obama-person bashing (as with the theme of this posted thread) and interconnections to various story lines of right wingy extremist thinking and realize this is a complicated geopolitical matter where measures and outcomes are inevitably going to be ambiguous and should be outside domestic political partisanship.

Discuss the various aspects of the situation, yes, but leave out the political twisted thinking with this situation.

This comment by Retired 669 and the response from bdamage demonstrate why it is virtually impossible to have any useful exchange of ideas and for participants to learn anything on this site.
Retired669 is obviously angry and says so by beginning his response calling the bdamage a blowhard. He then made two important points that most informed people would agree with: (1) It is destructive and counterproductive to insult our president and (2) It is useless to talk about impeaching him as there is no evidence to support it. Unfortunately, he began by insulting bdamage who then returned the insult by ignoring the content of Retired’s post and by attempting to diminish him as a minor annoyance.
If Retired had merely presented his two important points, would bdamage have acknowledged Retired’s two points, commented on them, and omitted the counter insults or would he have responded with insults regardless.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Welcome to 1PP, art***s26fe!

Your suggestion is a good one, but as another poster said, we should make every elected official's tenure no longer than 2 years, and retirement income should be eliminated. Pay them for the time they are there, then quit paying them altogether. They aren't worth much in office and are worth absolutely NOTHING out of office. They don't need retirement as they get wealthy on the speech circuit after office, and we cannot afford to pay it.

The degree of corruption that they can amass over a 20-30 year tenure is unspeakable and unforgivable. We need to cut 'em off at the pass!

http://www.thenation.com/blog/178708/how-economic-ine******y-k**ls?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=email_nation&utm_campaign=Email%20Nation%20-%2020140306&newsletter=email_nation_thursday#

Here is an excerpt:
"First, let’s deal with the “what do we mean by ine******y?” question. Therborn finds the definition of e******y developed by economist Amartya Sen to be most helpful. E******y, according to Sen, is “e******y of capability to function fully as a human being. Such a capability clearly entails survival, health (and aids for disability), freedom and knowledge (education) to choose one’s life-path, and resources to pursue it.”

"Inequalities, then, are “multidimensional barriers to human functioning in the world” which are “violations of human rights.” According to Therborn, there are three main types of ine******y: vital ine******y, which refers to inequalities regarding health outcomes and life expectancies; resource ine******y, which refers to economic inequalities of various sorts; and a concept he calls he calls existential ine******y, which he defines as “the unequal allocation of personhood, i.e., of autonomy, dignity, degrees of freedom, and of rights to respect and self-development.”

"The most eye-opening, and disturbing, passages of the book are those that concern “vital ine******y,” or the impact of ine******y on life and health. This is where the “k*****g fields” of the title comes in. “Ine******y k**ls,” states Therborn in the book’s first sentence. Consider these statistics:

§ Between 1990 and 2008, life expectancy of w***e A******n men declined by three years, and low-educated w***e A******n women saw their life expectancy decline by five years.

§ The life expectancy between the richest and poorest neighborhoods in Glasgow, a difference of twenty-eight years, is the same as that between the UK and Haiti.

§ The UK’s famous Whitehall studies indicate that the odds of poor health and premature death increased as the employee’s status in the civil service bureaucracy decreased—even controlling for use of alcohol, tobacco and other factors.

§ The restoration of capitalism to the former Soviet Union is associated with a stunning 4 million excess deaths there.

§ A number of studies show that unemployment is associated with a significant number of excess deaths, even when controlling for other health indicators.

"Those examples and many others that Therborn cites, which make “the correlation between hierarchy and death” all too clear, are harrowing. (Therborn wields a masterful command of an array of fascinating statistcs). Yet high ine******y societies are far from inevitable. Therborn argues that “capitalism and capitalists can, under certain circumstances, be taught how to behave.” Income ine******y in the Nordic countries in the early 1980s was about the same as it was in the C*******t bloc. Egalitarianism, he claims, continues to hold a powerful appeal, and there are at least three major reasons why high levels of economic ine******y tend to be deeply troubling to many people.

Chip Murray, who happens to be one of the entertainers here at CPAC 2014 wrote a song based off of a poem that appeared in the New York Daily News in response to a speech by President Harry Truman where he essentially promised a liberal utopia. The snarky poem was called "An Ode to the Welfare State."

ode





“Father, must I go to work“
No, my lucky son,
We’re living now on easy street
On dough from Uncle Sam.

We’ve left it up to Uncle Sam;
so don’t get exercised.
Nobody has to give a danm,
we’ve all been subsidized!”

welfare“But if Sam treats us all so well,
and feeds us milk and honey,
Please tell me, Daddy, tell me what the hell
he’s going to use for money?”

“Don’t worry, bub, there's not a hitch
in this here noble plan;
He simply soaks the filthy rich
and helps the common man!”
“But father, won’t there come a time
when they run out of cash,
When we have left them not a dime
when things will go to smash?”



“My faith in you is shrinking,
son you nosey little brat;
You do too much thinking, boy,
to be a Democrat!”


Read more at http://eaglerising.com/5010/ode-welfare-state/#is8LPDOgPRRbPg7Z.99

Putin is not Hitler. He has been in office a very long time and has not shown himself to be another "fuhrer". That being said, he is a tough guy, who grew up in a tough neighborhood, and came up through the KGB. The Sudetenland is an easy but incorrect analogy. I think we should borrow a page from the old Russian empire. What did 19th century Russia do when we annexed indigenous tribal homelands, Hawaii and Northern Mexico???

They did nothing. We do not need to ratchet up the heat by intemperate rhetoric and false analogies. The U.S. and Russia are still the 2 most powerful nuclear nations on this planet. I am happy that no U.S. president or Russian leader, in my lifetime has launched a hot war against the other (although we came uncomfortably close in 1962).

Enough with the overused Neville Chamberlain/Hitler analogies (this means you too, Hillary Clinton) that are not applicable to 2 slavic siblings that have a complex relationship going back to the 12th century.