- Monday we discussed the writings of Gary Hart, a former liberal U.S. Senator and Presidential candidate and his correct conclusions that we are being overrun by the most corrupt political class of all time and the lobbyists that drive their corruptness.
- Two days ago, we discussed the fact that when the whole economy and financial viability of the U.S., collapses due to political class overspending and fiscal insanity, whether or not one has a new type of marriage license or a flag will be totally insignificant in the economic downfall of the country.
- Yesterday we discussed a whole range of issues that will affect most Americans, not just a small percentage like gay marriage and the flag.
Today, in our final post under this theme, we will review an outstanding piece of journalism from the www.vox.com website, an article that paints a picture and probability of World War III, starting in the Baltic states, that is terrifying.
But before we do that, I am going to run the explanatory paragraphs we used the past three days to set up the reason why we find “Why Gay Marriage and The Confederate Flag Are Meaningless Issues Relative To The Lobbyist Behind the Curtain.”
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Later this week we will post our monthly series of political class insanity posts. Every month we gather and discussed the latest insanity, ineptness, wasteful spending, and corruption of the American political class. Unfortunately for us, over the years we have been doing this feature, every month we have needed more and more time just to cover one month’s worth of insanity.
********************
Later this week we will post our monthly series of political class insanity posts. Every month we gather and discussed the latest insanity, ineptness, wasteful spending, and corruption of the American political class. Unfortunately for us, over the years we have been doing this feature, every month we have needed more and more time just to cover one month’s worth of insanity.
Before we do that for July’s insanity, let’s look at some bigger picture issues that dwarf the wasteful spending, idiotic programs and laws, stupid quotes, and overall inept performance of the American class. Yes, it is important to point out how wasteful spending goes on in Washington, how government and political class programs never efficiently or effectively implement their goals, how stupid our politicians often sound when they open their mouths.
But the two topics we will discuss yesterday and today dwarf these issues. In fact, the top two social and political issues being hotly debated these days are also nits relative to the two overarching issues we will be discussing this week. It really does not matter what you think about gay marriage and the Supreme Court’s recent decision on it. It really does not matter what you think about the Confederate flag and what it stands for.
Talking about them in the context of the bigger issues is a total waste of time since both issues pale in comparison to the two bigger issues. The gay and lesbian community consists of less than 5% of the nation’s population. Confederate flag supporters are probably comparable in numbers, small minorities in the country.
But unless we address the major issue of political corruption in Washington (yesterday’s topic) and the unrelenting build up of the national debt (today’s issue) and the wasteful spending that goes with it, then who can get married and who can fly a flag of their choice will become totally, totally irrelevant in our near future since these two bigger issues affect EVERY American, not just a small minority of them.
Yesterday’s post is based on the writings of liberal former Senator and Presidential candidate Gary Hart. He is the author of 21 books and the following quotes come from his recent book, “The Republic Of Conscience.” While I have pulled out only a subset of quotes from his book that was discussed in a recent Time magazine article, I encourage everyone to go to that online Time article at:
http://time.com/3937860/gary-hart-america-corruption/
Mr. Hart eloquently and precisely points out how our democratic processes have been thoroughly corrupted by the American political class and the media, lobbyists, and organized political entities that feast on those processes and American tax dollars and freedoms. We have discussed this corruption of the democratic processes before,both in this blog and our book, “Love My Country, Loathe My Government.”
*****************************
Today we will focus on a wonderful piece of journalism from the website, www.vox.com. Upfront, let me tell you that I am not a big fan of most of Vox’s work. They are like the MSNBC of the Internet, strictly Obama and very liberal fan wavers. However, Max Fisher in his June 29, 2015 article, “How World War III Became Possible - A Nuclear Conflict With Russia Is Likelier Than You Think," is well written, thoroughly researched and scary as hell. I would suggest that those interested in the future of America and the human race read the entire article at:
http://www.vox.com/2015/6/29/8845913/russia-war
Below we will contain some highlights of his findings, using the original sub-topics he used in the entire article.
Introduction
- "Moscow is convinced the West is bent on isolating, subjugating, or outright destroying Russia. One in three Russians now believe the US may invade. Western nations worry, with reason, that Russia could use the threat of war, or provoke an actual conflict, to fracture NATO and its commitment to defend Eastern Europe. This would break the status quo order that has peacefully unified Europe under Western leadership, and kept out Russian influence, for 25 years.”
- "If you take a walk around Washington or a Western European capital today, there is no feeling of looming catastrophe. The threats are too complex, with many moving pieces and overlapping layers of risk adding up to a larger danger that is less obvious. People can be forgiven for not seeing the cloud hanging over them, for feeling that all is well — even as in Eastern Europe they are digging in for war. But this complacency is itself part of the problem, making the threat more difficult to foresee, to manage, or, potentially, to avert.”
- "There is a growing chorus of political analysts, arms control experts, and government officials who are sounding the alarm, trying to call the world's attention to its drift toward disaster. The prospect of a major war, even a nuclear war, in Europe has become thinkable, they warn, even plausible.”
I. The warnings: "War is not something that's impossible anymore"
- "A question that was absolutely impossible a couple of years ago, whether there might be a war, a real war, is back," Fyodor Lukyanov, head of an influential Russian think tank. "People ask it. The perception is that somebody would try to undermine Russia as a country that opposes the United States, and then we will need to defend ourselves by military means. Such fears, vague but existential, are everywhere in Moscow. Even liberal opposition leaders I met with, pro-Western types who oppose Putin, expressed fears that the US posed an imminent threat to Russia's security."
- "One can hear eerie echoes of the events a century ago that produced the catastrophe known as World War I," Harvard professor and longtime Pentagon adviser Graham Allison wrote in a May cover story for the National Interest, co-authored with Russia analyst Dimitri Simes.
- Their article, "Russia and America: Stumbling To War," warned that an unwanted, full-scale conflict between the US and Russia was increasingly plausible.
- Seems Europeans are more aware of these realities than Americans:
- According to Mr. Fisher, the root cause of all this anxiety is Russia’s Putin: “That problem is this: Putin's Russia is weak. It can no longer stand toe to toe with the US. It no longer has Europe divided in a stalemate; rather, it sees the continent as dominated by an ever-encroaching anti-Russian alliance. In the Russian view, the country's weakness leaves it at imminent risk, vulnerable to a hostile West bent on subjugating or outright destroying Russia as it did to Iraq and Libya.”
- This paranoia is driven by Putin’s domestic problems of civil unrest, hard economic times, and a repressive regime.
- Thus, to divert attention from these failings he looks for someone outside of Russia to blame for that country’s problems.
- Mr. Fisher: “Unable to cross America's red lines, Putin is doing his best to muddy them — and, to deter the Americans, muddying his own. Turning otherwise routine diplomatic and military incidents into games of high-stakes chicken favors Russia, he believes, as the West will ultimately yield to his superior will.”
- RAND's F. Stephen Larrabee wrote in one of his urgent warning pieces: "The Russia that the United States faces today is more assertive and more unpredictable — and thus, in many ways, more dangerous — than the Russia that the United States confronted during the latter part of the Cold War."
- Joseph Nye, the dean of Harvard University's school of government and one of America's most respected international relations scholars, compared the current situation to the conditions that set off World War I: "Russia seems doomed to continue its decline — an outcome that should be no cause for celebration in the West. States in decline — think of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1914 — tend to become less risk-averse and thus much more dangerous."
III. The drift: How the unthinkable became possible
- Mr. Fisher: “During the Cold War, the comparably matched Western and Soviet blocs prepared for war but also made sure that war never came. They locked Europe in a tense but stable balance of power; that balance is gone. They set clear red lines and vowed to defend them at all costs. Today, those red lines are murky and ill-defined. Neither side is sure where they lie or what really happens if they are crossed. No one can say for sure what would trigger war.”
- “That is why, analysts will tell you, today's tensions bear far more similarity to the period before World War I: an unstable power balance, belligerence over peripheral conflicts, entangling military commitments, disputes over the future of the European order, and dangerous uncertainty about what actions will and will not force the other party into conflict.”
- However, the wild card difference between today and the conditions before World War is the presence of nuclear weapons, weapons that could cause substantial damage to everything that the Europeans armies one hundred years ago could never accomplish: "It’s not just a difference in rhetoric. It’s a whole different world," Bruce G. Blair, a nuclear weapons scholar at Princeton, told the Wall Street Journal. He called Putin's decisions more dangerous than those of any Soviet leader since 1962. "There’s a low nuclear threshold now that didn’t exist during the Cold War."
- The article points out that even limited use of nuclear weapons in a conflict with Russia would make use of bombs that were significantly more powerful than the World War II bombs, bombs that would kill up to a billion people as a result of a “decade of winter,” causing massive crop failures.
We are going to stop our discussion of the article here and just include the sub-topics that Mr. Fisher covers. We cannot do justice to the fine piece of journalism he has here so we strongly recommend you read his entire analysis at the link above.
IV. How it would happen: The Baltics scenario
V. How it would happen: A plot to break NATO
VI. How it would happen: The fog of hybrid war
VII. How it would happen: The Ukraine scenario
VIII. The nuclear dangers: The red line is closer than you think
IX. The nuclear dangers: How Putin is pushing us back to the brink
X. The nuclear dangers: An atomic gun to the world's head
XI. The nuclear dangers: Does Putin believe nuclear war can be "won"?
XII. The nuclear dangers: End games
Let us leave today’s topic with the following quote: "You just can't have this kind of [nuclear] war," Eisenhower said in 1957. "There aren't enough bulldozers to scrape the bodies off the streets."
This concludes our four part series that discussed the reality that there are a lot more important topics, issues, and crises to talk about than gay marriage, which is now settled by the Supreme Court, and the Confederate flag. Because a new piece of marriage license paper or a piece of cloth are nits compared to the financial collapse of the country, the total and thorough corruption of Washington, a much higher than expected potential of nuclear war with Russia in Europe and a myriad of other things we have discussed this week.
Because really, a flag and a piece of paper really kind of mean nothing when we cannot find “enough bulldozers to scrape the bodies off the streets.”
www.loathemygovernment.com
It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.
Please visit the following sites for freedom:
Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
But the two topics we will discuss yesterday and today dwarf these issues. In fact, the top two social and political issues being hotly debated these days are also nits relative to the two overarching issues we will be discussing this week. It really does not matter what you think about gay marriage and the Supreme Court’s recent decision on it. It really does not matter what you think about the Confederate flag and what it stands for.
Talking about them in the context of the bigger issues is a total waste of time since both issues pale in comparison to the two bigger issues. The gay and lesbian community consists of less than 5% of the nation’s population. Confederate flag supporters are probably comparable in numbers, small minorities in the country.
But unless we address the major issue of political corruption in Washington (yesterday’s topic) and the unrelenting build up of the national debt (today’s issue) and the wasteful spending that goes with it, then who can get married and who can fly a flag of their choice will become totally, totally irrelevant in our near future since these two bigger issues affect EVERY American, not just a small minority of them.
Yesterday’s post is based on the writings of liberal former Senator and Presidential candidate Gary Hart. He is the author of 21 books and the following quotes come from his recent book, “The Republic Of Conscience.” While I have pulled out only a subset of quotes from his book that was discussed in a recent Time magazine article, I encourage everyone to go to that online Time article at:
http://time.com/3937860/gary-hart-america-corruption/
Mr. Hart eloquently and precisely points out how our democratic processes have been thoroughly corrupted by the American political class and the media, lobbyists, and organized political entities that feast on those processes and American tax dollars and freedoms. We have discussed this corruption of the democratic processes before,both in this blog and our book, “Love My Country, Loathe My Government.”
*****************************
Today we will focus on a wonderful piece of journalism from the website, www.vox.com. Upfront, let me tell you that I am not a big fan of most of Vox’s work. They are like the MSNBC of the Internet, strictly Obama and very liberal fan wavers. However, Max Fisher in his June 29, 2015 article, “How World War III Became Possible - A Nuclear Conflict With Russia Is Likelier Than You Think," is well written, thoroughly researched and scary as hell. I would suggest that those interested in the future of America and the human race read the entire article at:
http://www.vox.com/2015/6/29/8845913/russia-war
Below we will contain some highlights of his findings, using the original sub-topics he used in the entire article.
Introduction
- "Moscow is convinced the West is bent on isolating, subjugating, or outright destroying Russia. One in three Russians now believe the US may invade. Western nations worry, with reason, that Russia could use the threat of war, or provoke an actual conflict, to fracture NATO and its commitment to defend Eastern Europe. This would break the status quo order that has peacefully unified Europe under Western leadership, and kept out Russian influence, for 25 years.”
- "If you take a walk around Washington or a Western European capital today, there is no feeling of looming catastrophe. The threats are too complex, with many moving pieces and overlapping layers of risk adding up to a larger danger that is less obvious. People can be forgiven for not seeing the cloud hanging over them, for feeling that all is well — even as in Eastern Europe they are digging in for war. But this complacency is itself part of the problem, making the threat more difficult to foresee, to manage, or, potentially, to avert.”
- "There is a growing chorus of political analysts, arms control experts, and government officials who are sounding the alarm, trying to call the world's attention to its drift toward disaster. The prospect of a major war, even a nuclear war, in Europe has become thinkable, they warn, even plausible.”
I. The warnings: "War is not something that's impossible anymore"
- "A question that was absolutely impossible a couple of years ago, whether there might be a war, a real war, is back," Fyodor Lukyanov, head of an influential Russian think tank. "People ask it. The perception is that somebody would try to undermine Russia as a country that opposes the United States, and then we will need to defend ourselves by military means. Such fears, vague but existential, are everywhere in Moscow. Even liberal opposition leaders I met with, pro-Western types who oppose Putin, expressed fears that the US posed an imminent threat to Russia's security."
- "One can hear eerie echoes of the events a century ago that produced the catastrophe known as World War I," Harvard professor and longtime Pentagon adviser Graham Allison wrote in a May cover story for the National Interest, co-authored with Russia analyst Dimitri Simes.
- Their article, "Russia and America: Stumbling To War," warned that an unwanted, full-scale conflict between the US and Russia was increasingly plausible.
- Seems Europeans are more aware of these realities than Americans:
- A Swedish military security official stated in March that there are Russian intelligence operations already going on in Sweden.
- In May, the defense minister of Finland sent letters to 900,000 Finns, one sixth of the total population, telling them to prepare to be drafted in case of a “crisis situation.”
- Lithuania has already instituted a military draft.
- Poland has already identified a specific general who will take over as military commander in case a war breaks out.
- In April, NATO and other Western officials gathered in Estonia, a former Soviet republic and NATO member on Russia's border that Western analysts most worry could become ground zero for a major war with Russia, one that might include a limited Russian nuclear strike in Europe.
- According to Mr. Fisher, the root cause of all this anxiety is Russia’s Putin: “That problem is this: Putin's Russia is weak. It can no longer stand toe to toe with the US. It no longer has Europe divided in a stalemate; rather, it sees the continent as dominated by an ever-encroaching anti-Russian alliance. In the Russian view, the country's weakness leaves it at imminent risk, vulnerable to a hostile West bent on subjugating or outright destroying Russia as it did to Iraq and Libya.”
- This paranoia is driven by Putin’s domestic problems of civil unrest, hard economic times, and a repressive regime.
- Thus, to divert attention from these failings he looks for someone outside of Russia to blame for that country’s problems.
- Mr. Fisher: “Unable to cross America's red lines, Putin is doing his best to muddy them — and, to deter the Americans, muddying his own. Turning otherwise routine diplomatic and military incidents into games of high-stakes chicken favors Russia, he believes, as the West will ultimately yield to his superior will.”
- RAND's F. Stephen Larrabee wrote in one of his urgent warning pieces: "The Russia that the United States faces today is more assertive and more unpredictable — and thus, in many ways, more dangerous — than the Russia that the United States confronted during the latter part of the Cold War."
- Joseph Nye, the dean of Harvard University's school of government and one of America's most respected international relations scholars, compared the current situation to the conditions that set off World War I: "Russia seems doomed to continue its decline — an outcome that should be no cause for celebration in the West. States in decline — think of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1914 — tend to become less risk-averse and thus much more dangerous."
III. The drift: How the unthinkable became possible
- Mr. Fisher: “During the Cold War, the comparably matched Western and Soviet blocs prepared for war but also made sure that war never came. They locked Europe in a tense but stable balance of power; that balance is gone. They set clear red lines and vowed to defend them at all costs. Today, those red lines are murky and ill-defined. Neither side is sure where they lie or what really happens if they are crossed. No one can say for sure what would trigger war.”
- “That is why, analysts will tell you, today's tensions bear far more similarity to the period before World War I: an unstable power balance, belligerence over peripheral conflicts, entangling military commitments, disputes over the future of the European order, and dangerous uncertainty about what actions will and will not force the other party into conflict.”
- However, the wild card difference between today and the conditions before World War is the presence of nuclear weapons, weapons that could cause substantial damage to everything that the Europeans armies one hundred years ago could never accomplish: "It’s not just a difference in rhetoric. It’s a whole different world," Bruce G. Blair, a nuclear weapons scholar at Princeton, told the Wall Street Journal. He called Putin's decisions more dangerous than those of any Soviet leader since 1962. "There’s a low nuclear threshold now that didn’t exist during the Cold War."
- The article points out that even limited use of nuclear weapons in a conflict with Russia would make use of bombs that were significantly more powerful than the World War II bombs, bombs that would kill up to a billion people as a result of a “decade of winter,” causing massive crop failures.
We are going to stop our discussion of the article here and just include the sub-topics that Mr. Fisher covers. We cannot do justice to the fine piece of journalism he has here so we strongly recommend you read his entire analysis at the link above.
IV. How it would happen: The Baltics scenario
V. How it would happen: A plot to break NATO
VI. How it would happen: The fog of hybrid war
VII. How it would happen: The Ukraine scenario
VIII. The nuclear dangers: The red line is closer than you think
IX. The nuclear dangers: How Putin is pushing us back to the brink
X. The nuclear dangers: An atomic gun to the world's head
XI. The nuclear dangers: Does Putin believe nuclear war can be "won"?
XII. The nuclear dangers: End games
Let us leave today’s topic with the following quote: "You just can't have this kind of [nuclear] war," Eisenhower said in 1957. "There aren't enough bulldozers to scrape the bodies off the streets."
This concludes our four part series that discussed the reality that there are a lot more important topics, issues, and crises to talk about than gay marriage, which is now settled by the Supreme Court, and the Confederate flag. Because a new piece of marriage license paper or a piece of cloth are nits compared to the financial collapse of the country, the total and thorough corruption of Washington, a much higher than expected potential of nuclear war with Russia in Europe and a myriad of other things we have discussed this week.
Because really, a flag and a piece of paper really kind of mean nothing when we cannot find “enough bulldozers to scrape the bodies off the streets.”
Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:
www.loathemygovernment.com
It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.
Please visit the following sites for freedom:
Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
