Russian Propaganda vs. American Propaganda:

In Russia, where the State controls the media and the Oligarchy loves the President, Vladimir Putin is hugely popular with the masses. In spite of starting new wars, wrecking the economy, destroying jobs and empoverishing millions. Because the media is controlled by his allies.

In America, where the Oligarchy controls the media and hates the President, Barack Obama is hugely unpopular with the masses. In spite of ending two wars, saving the economy, creating jobs and lifting millions out of poverty. Because the media is controlled by his enemies.

See a pattern? Yeah, me too.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

Putin was not “emboldened by Obama”: he was inspired by Bush

Take a gander at that flock of sphincter birdies: they were paid political operatives sent to Florida to stage a fake riot at a Board of Election, thus helping steal the 2000 election for Gee Dubya Bush. The idea was; create a false impression of public outrage and dissent that the government “had to deal with right away”, thus allowing “extraordinary measures” to be taken to “preserve public order”. As we all know by now, that effort was a success, and the Bushistas robbed, pillaged, and murdered their way across the country and the Middle East for 8 interminable years of illegitimate government.

This year in Crimea, Vladimir Putin and his oligarch buddies followed the same model: they sent in faux “demonstrators” to create the impression of disorder, and so Russia just HAD TO send in troops to restore order and allow the oppressed locals the opportunity to shuffle off those dreaded shackles of Western Oppression, blahblahblahblahBLAHblahblah. (Guns were required in Ukraine because they, unlike we wimpy Americans, were unlikely to allow a bunch of corrupt billionaires to steal their entire nation. We rolled over and accepted it without a fight.)

Now in Eastern Ukraine, what was done in Crimea and Florida is being done again. The Russians are staging more fake riots and creating a “need” for “immediate intervention” yadayadayada. And any number of Right Wingnuts would have you believe this is being done because of Obama’s “weakness”.

Nonsense: a President who orders the invasion of sovereign countries to kill our enemies there (via drones and SEAL teams, mostly) is not a wimp. Obama is a hard-assed Chicago lawyer who would cut off your wedding tackle if need be, were you a threat to him. And we have ample proof of this. Ask the Taliban and various Al-Quaida groups: well, ask the surviving members, that is. He has killed a s***load of ’em, and never shed a tear.

No, if Putin needed guidance from an American Prexy, he got it from the Shrub. What Russia is doing in Eastern Europe is straight out of the “Republican” south Florida playbook.

It’s just as transparent, just about as illegal, and just as successful as it was in 2000.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

“Sovereign Citizen” found mentally incompetent.

An Ohio man named Mark Kulis, who was busted for having his house wired up with half a dozen bombs, a terrorist to be precise, has just been committed to 6 months locked up in the nut hatch in the hopes that he can be brought a bit closer to sanity. The hope is that he can at least understand that he has been doing illegal and dangerous things to himself and those around him. And with that understanding, be tried for his crimes in accordance with the law.

This writer is struck by the similarities between this “sovereign citizen” and many others in our world today. It seems that frustration causes people to create alternate realities in their minds, and they live in those fantasylands instead of the world around them. A couple of examples:

Number A: Fox “News” viewers are, most of us have found, living in a dream world – one in which Commander Stuffed Flightsuit won the Global War on Terror, white people are superior, poor people are evil, and Obama is everything bad/nothing good. And you Can. Not. Reach. Them. Not with logic, not with facts, not even with what is happening to themselves and their children. No, the echo chamber has captured their minds, and they cannot absorb anything from outside of the Cones of Silence in which they dwell.

Letter 2: Vladimir Putin and his Petersburg Posse have convinced themselves that their lives suck because of the collapse of several Russian empires, and that the way to un-suck said lives is to create a new and improved Russian empire. So far, it’s not going very well for anyone, but that isn’t stopping them. In their minds, they are hammers pounding on nails, and the fact that the problems are, say, open-heart surgery instead of nails does not register. They see nails because they want to see nails, and they swing their hammers, breaking people and countries in the real world that they refuse to see.

These are only two examples of many, of course. And it’s a problem. We cannot lock up hundreds of thousands of people in psych wards, no matter how badly they may need treatment. And until the lot of them wake up from their dreams, the entire planet is at risk.

Just as the poor, deluded Mr. Kulis could have blown up the houses of his neighbors along with his own because of what he firmly believes to be true, people like John McCain and Vladimir Putin could blow up the planet. They may have a more socially acceptable version of insanity, but they aren’t any more sane than he, and their insanity can kill a lot more people.

Until we all live in the same, evidence-based, real world, we are at risk. All we can do is reach the reachable and teach the teachable, and hope that’s enough.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

Putin has succeeded. Therefore, Russia will continue to take over more of its former colonies.

Toldjaso. Russia illegally stole the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine in order to increase Moscow’s wealth and influence. Lo and behold, the Russian state-controlled energy agency has taken control of gas and oil production in Crimea, thus shutting out other potential companies and countries.

“Gunpoint business deals”, we might call such operations: Russia is not doing anything irrational here. They are using military force to take control of the European energy market. Power, literally flowing from the barrel of a gun.

Yes, Putin’s Peeps are planning to commit massive human rights abuses in the area they have taken over. And yes, they are planning to swallow up more of the former Soviet Union, creating a greater Russia in the process. But there is nothing crazy about what they’re doing.

Immoral, illegal, unethical, inhuman, and despicable, yes. Loony, no. Putin and his renascent empire are acting with cold, pure, infernally logical intent as they seize land and power: power that will continue its accretion until the rest of the world punches Vladimir in the metaphorical nose and stops him.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

Ethnic Cleansing in Crimea, already? Yes.

Putin doesn’t waste time, that’s for sure. The new Russian overlords of Crimea are relocating the Tatars, just like they did back in the Soviet era that Vladdy-Boy still pines for. Like it says in the Moscow Times:

Ukraine’s breakaway region of Crimea will ask Tatars to vacate part of the land where they now live in exchange for new territory elsewhere in the region, a top Crimean government official has said.
The Crimean Tatars, a historic people of the region, were deported en masse to Central Asia by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin 70 years ago. Although many of them returned in the early 1990s, they were unable to reclaim the land they had possessed before their deportation.

Yep, just like in Kosovo, Germany, and colonial America, the people who the government dislikes are being dispossessed of their lands in the name of “social needs”. Russia is openly planning ethnic cleansing. Let’s say it again: RUSSIA IS OPENLY PLANNING ETHNIC CLEANSING.

No doubt all of the American Putinistas will now forswear their allegiance to St. Vladimir of Poot, right?

Oh, hell no. All those useful idiots will continue to deny, obfuscate, and pretend that it isn’t really the same thing as when it was done by, say, the Nazis or the Serbs; because, hey, Putin the shirtless bear-wrestler is doing it. Christ on an ICBM, you f***wits, wake the f***ing f*** up.

Another Trail of Tears is about to occur. Anyone who STILL supports Russia after this is one with the perpetrators of genocide. F*** anyone and everyone who does so.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

Note to the West: Stop being stupid.

For example, stop pretending that Putin isn’t an imperialist who is trying to expand Russian hegemony. He doesn’t make any such pretense: “The collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geo-political catastrophe of the century.” Given his two (thus far) illegal annexations of previously sovereign nations’ land in Georgia and Ukraine, he clearly meant every word of that statement.

Using illegally-installed cronies and stooges where possible, and the Russian Army where political tricks fail, Russia is expanding itself. Even though extremist loons peddle conspiracy theories of shadowy fascist western cabals, the reality is clear: Putin is taking back the land that Russia “tragically” lost.

While useful idiots over here are playing chorus to this illegal land grab, Russia’s former colonies are doing no such thing: in fact, they are quite reasonably scared s***less and have yelled for help. Lithuania and Latvia have asked for NATO to honor its obligations and protect them from being Russia’s next victims.

It’s seemingly easy for Americans to act all high-and-mighty and indulge in silly political parlor games: Russia isn’t invading us, and isn’t likely to, regardless of whatever movies you might have seen. It seems as if we can afford to be stupid. But the people of Eastern Europe lack that luxury. And the more we fiddle about, bleating our idiotic ideological irrelevancies, the more license we give Russia to reconstruct such parts of the Soviet Union as it wishes to.

But with high Russian state-controlled media officials promising, a’la Khrushchev, to nuke us out of existence, we might well want to rethink our smug assumptions of safety from Russian action. Because we have a former KGB chief in charge of Russia, and he is slowly rebuilding the empire whose loss he so loudly laments. Whether the new Russian imperial structure is Communist, Czarist, or Kleptocratic matters very little to us: the new Russia is NOT planning on being our friend.

We know this because they are not being the friends of our friends. We need to stand with our allies, lest we, like they,  suffer the fate of   Ossetia,  and Crimea. Or worse.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

America is NOT like Russia. Obama is NOT like Putin.

WTF, America? Idiots like Palin and Graham are praising Putin and slamming our Prexy, Libertarians and Lefties are doing likewise, all while Russia holds a fake election in Crimea and invades a foreign country. Neither of which we are doing.Nor are we committing the many crimes that the Russian government does on a daily basis, while pretty much getting a pass from various Western nitwits.

Three specific examples for the clue-challenged:
Number A: Obama does not control American media, and has no one threatening nuclear strikes against us. Putin does, and has goons that are threatening to turn us “into radioactive ash”.

Letter 2: Neither America nor NATO have sent troops into Ukraine. Russia has.

Thirdly: Obama has taken no steps to expand America’s boundaries by taking over other sovereign nations. Russia
has, more than once.

People who are comparing the two countries are intellectually dishonest at best, clueless perhaps, or useful idiots at worst. America is far from perfect, but our Prexy isn’t busy having gays horse-whipped, taking over the media, or using natural gas to blackmail half of a continent.

Stop it, OK? Just stop it.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

Russia, Crimea, the West, and Ukraine: a Parable.

Suppose, Gentle Reader, that your belligerent neighbor finally stops trying to talk you into selling him your property, and does a home invasion with a load of his shady cronies. He points guns at your head (and the heads of your family) and gives you two choices: sell him your land, or lease it to him for now (but he will be in total control of you and your property for the duration of the lease: and you know he’s gonna take it in the end, anyway).

When you say, “no, I don’t like either option, this land is mine and I want to keep it”, your invading neighbor says, “not an option”, and you hear the clicking sound of the safety on his gun being disengaged. That weapon is cocked, a round is in the chamber, and your head is about to go splat, in a very noisy manner. The only person in your family who likes the situation is your estranged daughter, who thinks the neighbor’s thuggish son is hot. So even if the motherf***er shoots you dead, he gets the land.

Thus, the situation in Ukraine writ small. Russia strolled into Crimea with guns, took control of the situation, and presented the populace with a “heads you lose it all now, tails you lose it all later” set of options. A few of the locals like it, most don’t, and some are vehemently opposed; but that gun is pointed at their collective noggin, and they don’t want to die, especially since they are f***ed no matter what.

This parable is accurate so far as it goes, but of course the real-life version is far worse. Putin’s thug cronies have already declared the outcome as a done deal, never mind how the vote turns out. And the other “neighbors” can’t call the “cops” to protect the Ukranian people, even though (or perhaps because) they know they could be next on the chopping block. These poor people are SO f***ed.

That, my friends, is what is going down in Ukraine. And it sucks.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

Here is why Russia wants control of Ukraine: Money and Power.

Pretty much the usual reason for imperialist ventures. Vladdy-Boy is trying to hold onto the leverage he has over Europe (said leverage is the natural gas Russia exports), and as you’ll see below, Ukraine has a LOT of gas pipelines:

Now for the fun bit: other countries want to make money, too, so they would love to sell Ukraine some gas:

This is what Putin’s bitch stooge assclown partner-in-crime Yanukovic was trying to stop, and why he got run out of Kiev on a rail. And now Vlad is mad, sad, and bad, so he’s taking Crimea to sooth his hurted feewings. Plus to intimidate, and gain greater leverage to negotiate.

It’s all about money and power. It’s why the Shrub tried to take over Iraq, and it’s why Putin tried to take over Ukraine. No conspiracy theories needed.

As soon as Western companies started drilling gas wells in Ukraine, Russia’s power and influence were threatened, so Putin tried to take over: first via a puppet government, and now with guns.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

Masked gunmen installing petty thugs is, like women distributing swords, no basis for a system of government.

Just stop for a second and focus, OK? The man people call Crimea’s leader was NOT legitimately elected to be such. Unless you’re fool enough to believe in the validity of secret elections held with guns pointed at voters’ heads, and that a man who previously barely got into his previous office as leader of a fringe party with only a few paltry seats could somehow magically win power in his nonexistent “nation” when nobody was looking. In reality, Mr. Aksyonov is a criminal who is part of a Russian land grab that is reminiscent of Russia’s previous actions in Georgia, and Germany’s in Poland:

Crimea has been swept into turmoil over the past two weeks, as Moscow, furious over the fall of Yanukovych and the pro-Western outlook of the new government, used hundreds of Russian soldiers to seize political control of the peninsula. The Russian soldiers — who Moscow insists are members of a Crimean self-defense force that Aksyonov created last year — ringed the regional parliament. Then, with armed soldiers inside the chamber, Aksyonov was named prime minister.

His critics say it’s clear that Aksyonov is simply a puppet, someone installed by Moscow to ease what has become, in effect, a Russian takeover of its former territory.

“If six months ago someone would have told me that Aksyonov would become prime minister, I would have laughed,” said Valentina Tsamar, a prominent Simferopol journalist with the TV channel Chernomorskaya.

So, after Russia took over Crimea’s government at gunpoint, and said fake government called for a fake referendum on “joining” Russia, the “Prime Minister” is already taking steps that shouldn’t be taken until after the election results are known. The obvious conclusion, Gentle Reader, is that the results of the next “election” will be rigged, just as the recent parliamentary “election” was. The results are already known, because the referendum is a farce, a ruse, a smokescreen erected to scare the cowards, fool the foolish, and gull the gullible.

This is as illegal as Mexico storming the Texas Capitol, deposing the elected government and installing a posse of Narcos in its place, and then voting to secede from the United States and rejoin Mexico. After all, there are Mexican nationals in Texas who have to be protected from the American government, right? And there are cultural ties that go back centuries, yes? And such ties surely supersede any silly latter-day political boundaries, right?

Wrong. Just as in Ukraine. This is an illegal land grab, like countless others throughout history (including some by the United States, Britain, France, and so on). And like all those other invasions and occupations, it is illegal as Hell and completely illegitimate.

Those loons of the political extremes who shriek and shout at the West for alleged “imperialism” as it insists on Ukraine following a path based on international law; the jackass Conspiracy Theorists who ignore the facts on the ground and and use their own fantasies in lieu of those facts; said shouters are but useful idiots that are helping the real imperialists in this case. Said imperialists being, of course, Putin and his corrupt buddies.

Such bulls***. Wake up and smell it, peeps.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky