Asian Trip Disaster

Barack Hussein Obama has managed to anger Red China, the nation that holds more of America's debt than any other foreign country. Obama is making empty pledges that under his administration, the United States will continue to defend the territorial claims of other countries over areas also claimed by the People's Republic of China. Obama's words are only bluff, but Red China may not take it that way. I am not sure that Obama would defend Japan, the Philippines, or any other "ally" in Asia, but I am sure the People's Republic as our major creditor has the capacity to cripple America economically, and since the huge majority of our consumer goods are imported from Red China, that if the Communist leadership takes umbrage at Obama's clumsiness (indeed, even stupidity), that China could ruin the lives of ordinary Americans by withholding cheap exports much more easily than the US could inflict pain on China. America now relies on Red China but the People's Republic does not stake their survival or even their prosperity on the United States.

Will Netanyahu Fall?

With pressure from the right in his coalition including from within his own Likud Party to cease concessions to the recalcitrant Palestinians, Benyamin Netanyahu may not remain in power in Israel very long. He is also facing threats from leftist partners in his coalition who threaten to dissolve the government if Netanyahu leaves the peace process. With the left and right having mutually exclusive agendas, it is hard to envision how Netanyahu could placate both. Likud can not muster enough mandates to govern on their own, and if Likud fractures with those on the right within that party leaving because they realize Palestinians will never accept the existence of Israel as a "Jewish state", Netanyahu will be replaced as Prime Minister unless he cobbles together a government out of other parties whose disparate interests he can mollify in other ways. The best way to preserve the Zionist ideal might be to have a new government of the right emerge without Netanyahu in it. The worst outcome would be if a government forms led by peace at almost any price leftists like Tzipi Livni and Lapid who might pretend to be security-conscious by keeping Netanyahu as Prime Minister while only really allowing him to be a figurehead, which former allies of Netanyahu in the hawkish camp might allege is already going on now.

The Biden Code

If no nation or people is ever permitted to "occupy" territory claimed by another nation or people as Vice President Joe Biden just contended in Kiev, then the US must start by evacuating all our nationals from Hawaii. Then, the US should withdraw Americans from Puerto Rico, Guam, and the parts of the Virgin Islands that America "occupies". Then, we better give Alaska back- to the Russians or the "First Peoples"- not sure which. Then US citizens who are not of aboriginal origin in the Lower Forty-eight ought to start packing. There are First Nations that colonists and immigrants displaced that under Biden's logic need to be given their land back and that would amount to just about everyplace America has ever planted the flag. How would Obama and Biden characterize "Manifest Destiny", the concept of conquest without which there would be no United States of America? I am in no way endorsing Russia's actions regarding the Ukraine, but they are not unusual in the course of human history which has always been marked by conflict and the resultant carnage that conflict brings. Let us hope that further bloodshed can be avoided and that Putin is done grabbing disputed land.

The Next Move

The Ukraine does not have sufficient military resources to prevent Russia from asserting her will in the Eastern Ukraine. The residents of the area in question are about equally divided between ethnic Russians, who were brought there during Soviet times and native Ukrainians whose ancestors were there for centuries. Several ethnic Russians were killed in a firefight that broke an Easter truce. The Russians assert that Ukrainian nationalists were behind the checkpoint attack. The Ukrainians contend that Russia may have staged the attack as a pretext for further aggression. Which side is right makes less of a difference ultimately than which side can muster the most armed force, and in this case, Russia could take all of the Ukraine in a matter of a few short weeks and suppress most resistance within months if Vladimir Putin sees that to be in Russia's national interest and orders an attack.

Plague of Paganism

Most Americans are or have been in a holy season and are offering up heartfelt prayer, but too many worship at the altar of money, or the altar of celebrity, or ridicule the God of nature by nature-worship devoid of the Lord. We have atheist activists trying to chase God from the public square. The United States is moving ever further away from the Providential underpinnings that framed our founding. When we need God the most as a nation, Americans seek Him the least. Some even mock the Divine. The cure for what ails America and the world the most would be greater Faith.

Environmental Holy Day

A "holy day" has emerged for those who disdain the Lord and instead worship "mother earth". This Earthday holiday, which will fall on April nineteenth, is hilarious. Instead of a church, mosque, temple, or synagogue, a "green believer" can worship at the nearest tree. (Hopefully at the base, otherwise, the parishioner might fall off.) Perhaps, instead of baring the soul to a priest, the supplicant can confess his sins against gaia to a Keebler elf in the nook of a tree. I can hear the confessional now: "Before dusk, I turned on a light and last Monday, I did not carpool". I can see the penance too. On the coldest day of winter, you must set your heat no higher than fifty-eight degrees, even though you will end up wearing four sweaters. On days where the temperature passes one hundred degrees Fahrenheit, you must walk six miles to and from work. Your self-sacrifice will save the earth, except of course, in the overall scheme of things, what any individual does or does not do, has no measurable impact on the climate whatsoever. People did not create the earth, and it is the height of hubris to think that our everyday actions can save or destroy the planet.

Mount Everest Disaster

I will never understand why some feel the need to conquer mountains, but once again, lives have been claimed by the world's tallest peak in an event where as many as thirteen sherpas were killed. Obviously, anyone attempting to surmount Mount Everest is assuming a risk. For those native to the area, the peak is a mixed blessing, as climbing and the tourism associated with it has provided a livelihood to many, but over the course of the years, so many mountain guides have died, unknown to most of the world and mourned little outside their families. The mountaineers with deep pockets will still come, and there will always be those who live in relative destitution who will risk their very lives to serve them. Is that exploitation? Maybe, but many of those deep-pocketed client climbers have succumbed too, up there on the mountain.