Tag Archives: lies

Russia Reneges on Ukraine

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And, no, I’m not talking about the Belgrade Memorandum, in which Russia, among others, agreed to guarantee Ukraine’s territorial integrity in return for Ukraine turning over its then-third largest in the world nuclear weapons arsenal to Russia.

I’m talking about the just signed—by Russia, Ukraine, the EU, and the US—agreement pretending to “neutraliz[e] a crisis that has brought Ukraine to the brink of civil war.”  Among other things, that agreement called for “dissidents” to depart from the Ukraine government buildings that they had seized in eastern Ukraine.

However.

Denis Pushilin, the leader of the uprising that calls itself the People’s Republic of Donetsk, said at a news conference in the southeast city’s seized administration building that the activists won’t exit until the new leaders in Kiev leave the government he says they have been occupying….

“After that, we’ll also agree to do it,” Mr. Pushilin said.  Instead, he said he and other activists in the building are continuing to prepare for a referendum on the southeast Ukraine region’s future that he says they intend to hold by May 11.

That referendum for which Vladimir Putin’s representative in the Ukrainian city of Donetsk is pushing so hard is another of Putin’s demands: he’s threatened to deepen his invasion of Ukraine and occupy eastern and southern Ukraine, as he’s already done the Ukrainian oblast of Crimea, if those other oblasts aren’t allowed to be separate “autonomous” regions.  That threat is made manifest by his having amassed some 50,000 Russian soldiers, armor, artillery, and combat aircraft just a few short miles from the eastern Ukrainian border with Russia.  That threat is made manifest by his having infiltrated special operations forces into eastern and southern Ukraine to drive and to support these building occupations—the same tactic he used to seize Crimea.

And now his representative is refusing to honor the “agreement” his employer has signed.

Only an idiot or a naïf could sit in the White House or in Brussels and think Putin would keep his signed word.

Budget Lies

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President Barack Obama, aided and abetted by the mendacious NLMSM, is touting his latest “budget” proposal as cutting spending by $600 billion over the next 10 years.  But Scott Rasmussen, cited in The Wall Street Journal, has noted,

in the current year, the federal government is expected to spend $3,651 billion.  …the president’s budget calls for spending $3,901 billion in 2015.  That’s $250 billion more than this year.  It’s not a one-year aberration either.  Spending increases are projected every single year for the next decade and beyond.

Calling that a spending cut is an outright lie.  Even if the spending increases are smaller increases than originally planned, they’re still increases, not cuts.

As Rasmussen also pointed out, this isn’t unique to Obama, though; it’s been going on since at least the ’70s.  But it’s got to stop.  Full stop.

Obamacare Dissembling

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The Obama administration announced Wednesday that it will let people keep health insurance plans that would otherwise be out of compliance with ObamaCare for another two years….

Yet, just a bit over a year ago, when President Barack Obama first “waived” the Business Mandate, he threatened to veto a House bill that would have codified that delay and that added a comparable delay of the Individual Mandate—what he’s now “waiving” for those two years.

Obama vastly prefers diktat to legitimacy.

Administration…Foot-Dragging

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Russian energy exports.  Ukraine, for instance, gets some 40%-50% of its natural gas from Russia, and Europe gets roughly 30% its natural gas from Russia.  Recall, just a few short years ago, too, the Russian extortion of cutting off those gas flows—in the middle of winter—over an alleged bill-paying (or not) scandal: it wasn’t those who supposedly weren’t paying the country’s gas bill who were harmed, though, it was the citizenry threatened with freezing temperatures in their own homes.  And as part of the Russian extortion, they cut off gas flows to Europe, too.

Now comes the Obama administration, with its control over our own ability to export natural gas to various places—for instance, to Europe and to Ukraine—or to the world generally.  The one export targets would directly break Russia’s hold over Ukraine and Europe, while the other would, at the least, drive down the price of natural gas, making it easier for those two to find and import other sources.  Yet this is the claim of Bill Gibbons, spokesman for President Barack Obama’s Energy Department:

Regarding specific Energy Department actions on LNG exports, the Department remains committed to an expeditious and responsible process.  We continue to make public interest determinations on a case-by-case basis, carefully considering economic, energy security, environmental and geopolitical impacts, among other factors.

Surely, breaking Ukraine’s and Europe’s dependence on Russian energy sources is a matter of geopolitical impact, especially with Russia having invaded Ukraine.  Yet the Energy Secretary, who under DoE’s permitting process can deny applications to countries that don’t have a free trade agreement with us, has approved all of six applications in the last three plus years to such countries, and he has some 24 more applications sitting on his desk with no action in the offing.  Certainly, all of those predate the present Russian assault, but acting on those export applications, rather than dissembling about them, would have an immediate favorable impact on Ukraine and Europe, if only through natural gas pricing on the world market—which would help these while harming Russia.

This administration automatically foot drags, even in an on-going crisis, on any matter pertaining to international affairs.  It has no understanding of foreign affairs, and so it’s wholly incapable of anticipating and planning for global events; this lack underlies its foot-dragging.

It’s no wonder our enemies have such contempt for us—and Ukraine is in the strait it’s in.