March 3, 2014

Our relatives from Sweden have returned home after a two-week CO ski vacation. A good time was had by all and the two young Swedes (13 and 10) were a special joy. Sofia, the younger sister, took great delight in quietly preparing my birthday gift: unwrapping Hershey kisses and replacing the paper “tags” with her own little printed strips of birthday good wishes. Like her mother, Sofia is definitely a “free spirit.” The girls decided that next year they would rather return to Colorado than go skiing in Sweden.

Joe Biden and the presidency. The vice president can alternately make the public smile and wince. Here is a vignette from an email sent by a friend as Biden was “gearing up” for the coming presidential campaign in 2012. The passage (circa 1945) came from the soon-to-be Pope John XXIII and was meant as a reminder that Biden, on the brink of another four-year term, was reaching an age for reflection and reckoning. Of course, John XXIII went on to hold the papacy until his death in 1963.

[John XXIII reflected,] I must not disguise myself from the truth,” the quote began. “I am definitely approaching old age. My mind resents this and almost rebels, for I still feel so young, eager, agile and alert. But one look in the mirror disillusions me. This is the season of maturity.

     Now it is February 2014, with November 2016 not that far away, and the VP is mulling over his chances for gaining the Democratic party's nomination. Would Biden be a continual breath of fresh air or just a too-old white-guy with too many ties to the past?
     Biden has been described as still the happy warrior, but the past couple years have been a struggle for both relevance and leverage—a fight largely hidden from public view, between the presidential dreams he can’t quite relinquish and the shrinking parameters of a job he described as derivative, borrowed and “totally reflective of the president’s power.”
Ah, Joe, I fear you were born a bit too long ago. Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/02/joe-biden-profile-103667.html#ixzz2uXCIsMf9


Human (gay) rights and AZ. Governor Jan Brewer's veto of SB 1062 will, no doubt, raise the hackles of the religious right, while pleasing the GLBT electorate. Whether or not the Governor and her backers care to admit it, business interests clearly triumphed. The money to be lost in convention and other business might well have been considerable and, most certainly, the state did not want to risk losing the money that will flow into the state when it hosts the 2015 Super Bowl game.


Admiring winter trees. Last Wednesday a friend in NC commented that there was only a little time left to admire the architecture of winter trees. Then last Thursday afternoon, as I drove up from Denver through the foothills into the mountains, the light was just right and the aspens shone a ghostly white amid the surrounding evergreens. Here in the mountains it will be a while, though, before spring arrives and the aspens begin to bud out, changing and softening the scenery.


Ukraine and the Crimea region. A story from the Washington Post:
Simferopol, Ukraine — The revolutionary upheaval in Ukraine’s faraway capital has awakened the separatist dreams of ethnic Russians living...on the Crimean Peninsula, where on Thursday pro-Russia gunmen who occupied the regional parliament building were met with an outpouring of support.
The situation is exacerbated by the fact that Russia has a huge, vital naval base at Sevastopol on southern Ukraine's Crimea peninsula and a special treaty governing the base's use. The Crimea and the warm-water naval base have been key outposts since the long-ago days of Imperial Russia. 
     Ukrainians with cultural ties/leanings toward Russia and their associated militia forces began by demonstrating for closer ties with Russia, whose government has initiated unplanned military exercises close to the Crimean border. Indeed, the regional capitol building in Simferopol was occupied last Thursday by self-defense militiamen, who proclaimed themselves to be Russian and calling for the return of the Crimea to Russia. The Cold War is not as finished as might have appeared just weeks ago. 
     Columnist Charles Krauthammer notes that American neutrality only creates a vacuum which Russian president Putin is all too eager to fill. http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/pro-russia-separatists-flex-muscle-in-ukraines-crimean-peninsula/2014/02/27/dac10d54-9ff0-11e3-878c-65222df220eb_story.html?hpid=z2
     It also seems worthwhile to quote the first two paragraphs from David Ignatius's column of March 3. (Washington Post)
Napoleon is said to have cautioned during an 1805 battle: “When the enemy is making a false movement we must take good care not to interrupt him.” The citation is also sometimes rendered as “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.” Whatever the precise wording, the admonition is a useful starting point for thinking about the Ukraine situation.
Vladimir Putin has made a mistake invading Crimea, escalating a crisis for Russia that has been brewing for many months. It might have been beneficial if President Obama could have dissuaded him from this error. But Putin’s move into Crimea appeared to spring from a deeper misjudgment about the reversibility of the process that led to the breakup of Soviet Union in 1991. The further Russia wades into this revanchist strategy, the worse its troubles will become.
There are, no doubt, a significant number of powerful, high-profile Russians who hold steadfastly to the belief that the dissolution of the USSR could have – should have – been prevented. Especially, among the most “important” near-European republics.
     Eugene Robinson, Washington Post columnist, captures my thoughts.
Let’s be real. It’s one thing to say that Russia’s takeover of the Crimean Peninsula “cannot be allowed to stand,” as many foreign policy sages have proclaimed. It’s quite another to do something about it.
   Is it just me, or does the rhetoric about the crisis in Ukraine sound as if all of Washington is suffering from amnesia? We’re supposed to be shocked — shocked! — that a great military power would cook up a pretext to invade a smaller, weaker nation? I’m sorry, but has everyone forgotten the unfortunate events in Iraq a few years ago?
     Zbigniew Brzezinski, president Jimmy Carter's national security adviser (1977-1981), writes that one factor will be the response by the Ukrainians themselves, by “...[their] ...reactions to any further repetition of Putin’s Crimean aggression and by whether the nation believes that the United States and NATO are truly supportive.” 
    Of necessity, all this recalls America's non-response to the heroic actions of Hungarians (1956) and Czechoslovakians (1968) who tried valiantly, but vainly, to throw out their Soviet occupiers. Can the Ukrainians expect more forthright, meaningful assistance from America, NATO, and the UN? I fear they should not count on anything more than platitudes.
     You will not find much mention of the following scenario in the main stream press, but there are an increasing number of stories circulating in alternative sources that the US made it own present thorny bed. How? By supporting under-the-table/behind-the-scenes efforts led by the CIA to unseat duly elected, but Russian-leaning president, Yanukovych.
     Nothing new here; it has happened before. The dissolution of the USSR and subsequent freeing of its eastern European satellites opened the archives of all their intelligence services. The newly found material shone a light on decades-long CIA efforts to encourage rebellion in these satellite nations – only to have our government back away from any substantive assistance when revolts did indeed break out in East Germany, Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Only in Poland did the massive home-grown, labor-led revolt have any success. This was partly due to massive support from America's very large, demonstrative Polish-American population, the Polish Roman Catholic church, and a Polish Pope.


Obama's presidency. Gary Younge is a reporter for the Guardian based in the US, who also write a monthly column in the Nation. His recent story is headlined, “What the hell is Barack Obama's presidency for.” He begins by contrasting the major reform programs announced by LBJ in his first months as “unexpected president” with Obama's time in office. Reflecting on recent events, domestic and foreign, Younge say, “If there was a plot, [Obama has] lost it. If there was a point, few can remember it. If he had a big idea, he shrank it. If there's a moral compass powerful enough to guide such contradictions to more consistent waters, it is in urgent need of being reset.” Younge continues,
Given the [current] barriers to democratic engagement and progressive change in America – gerrymandering, big money and Senate vetoes – we should always be wary of expecting too much from a system designed to deliver precious little to the poor. We should also challenge the illusion that any individual can single-handedly produce progressive change in the absence of a mass movement that can both drive and sustain it.....If you're going to be president, then I guess you obviously want to be in the history books," said Susan Aylward, a frustrated Obama supporter in Akron, Ohio, shortly before the last election. "So what does he want to be in the history books for? I don't quite know the answer to that yet." Sadly, it seems, neither does [Younge].
Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/23/what-is-barack-obama-presidency-for


The nation's changed capital. The link below will take you to a sobering piece outlining why a respected, long-time Washington Post employee (from summer intern in 1963 to managing editor, 1991-1998) has abandoned Washington, sadly disillusioned by the state of governance in America.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-republicans-lost-their-mind-democrats-lost-their-soul-and-washington-lost-its-appeal/2014/02/28/2ef5429c-9d89-11e3-9ba6-800d1192d08b_story.html?hpid=z3

Thank you for reading.  I hope you have a good week without too much snow and cold.