The Obamacare package was passed through Congress with the explicit explanation by the democrat-controlled Congress that no one had read the bill. Certainly, the republicans hadn't, either, but not one of them voted for it in either the Senate or the House, thus absolving themselves of any responsibility for it. It would not have become law but for an unbelievable opinion by Chief Justice Roberts – swinging the Court – that a penalty is actually a tax and since government can collect taxes, Obamacare is, ipso facto, legal.
Translated, this means that a traffic fine is not a penalty but a tax; however, traffic fines are not reported on tax forms or collected by the State IRS, meaning that they don't apply. Under Obamacare, the IRS is responsible for enforcing the “tax,” which actually is not a tax at all but a government fine for not “signing-up.” The enforcement of any federal fine lies within the purview of the Justice Department, not the IRS.
Again without a single republican vote, the House democrats (feeling their oats after just retaking the House) passed the cap-and-trade bill in June 2009 without reading it. Indeed, 300 pages of it were added after midnight on the day it was passed. It was defeated in a democrat-dominated Senate...the smell was too great to overcome. It was designed to bankrupt electricity providers, as the president had promised in his 2008 campaign, with consumer-costs “skyrocketing” – his term.
On 14 April, Treasury Secretary Lew signed a loan guarantee (actually a giveaway) of $1 billion to Ukraine, the money to be borrowed, of course, from China since the U.S. is bankrupt and running deficits too huge to comprehend. The Chinese economy is also in trouble so this clueless administration is heading the nation for the proverbial cliff.
Ukraine was not having trouble and Crimea was not taken over by Russia until Ukrainian protesters took to the streets for their own “Slavic Spring” and threw out their government in February. Instead of wisely staying out of this mess, hopefully having learned hard lessons in the Middle East, Obama and State Secretary Kerry have attempted to become the world's “bully” and dictate what will happen to both Ukraine and Russia (tried to influence Crimea but looked foolish), without the actual resources to do anything. The Europeans – actually with something on the line – would just as soon be in Philadelphia.
Ukraine is not a NATO member so there is no NATO responsibility to do anything, especially – also with regard to eastern Ukraine – since a huge percentage (probably the majority) of Ukrainans there want to be part of Russia anyway, as was the case in Crimea. Virginia didn't want to be part of the U.S. in 1865, but Lincoln, without outside help, turned the state around. It's up to the Ukrainians to put their house in order, as Lincoln and the legitimate U.S. did.
NATO has 28 member nations that geographically encircle the west end of Russia, including the U.S., Canada and Iceland. Even tiny Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, that border on Russia, are NATO members. Any pressure by Putin on any of these nations would automatically – by treaty – invoke action by NATO, including virtually all of Europe, the Scandinavian countries, the U.S. and Canada.
This means that the United Nations would have no say concerning that possibility, contrary to its stupid resolution in 2011 that “permitted” the U.S. to attack Libya, a deed so foul as to still invade political nostrils. Current UN Ambassador Power (then just a White House hack) was an instigator of that genocide – along with Hillary Clinton and Susan Rice – and should keep her mouth shut about any American action anywhere. Rice is now head of NSA and Clinton is actually considered for the presidency—nauseous even to contemplate. Power is harmless since nobody takes her seriously.
Vice President Biden is off to Ukraine right away to spread the word of support, which for him is “God love ya!” Republican Senator McCain, as the case with Libya, Syria and most everywhere else, is yammering for the president to send weapons to the Ukraine government, such as it is, which would use them against Ukrainians. A bit smaller than Texas, Ukraine has 129,950 troops, according to the World Almanac, though many of them may now feel more allegiance to Russia than Ukraine.
In any case, Ukraine is not a U.S. problem.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
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