As a retired oilfield training engineer, I have traveled to 38 different countries. I have worked in Russia and China. I have never been in Ukraine but I have been in Romania, which is just across the border. Not once in my travels to these countries has any of their citizens come to me and said, “We love Americans and want them to like us. To promote greater friendship with America, we make American visitors feel welcome. To do so, we give them large sums of money. We would like to give you three million dollars. Yours is in this package. We hope you enjoy it and remember your friends here.”
It’s different when you’re Hunter Biden. Hunter, who had little or no experience in management and none in the oil industry, went to Ukraine and a Ukrainian oil company instantly hired him with a salary of eighty thousand dollars a month. While Hunter was there, then-Vice President of the United States Joe Biden happened to notice that the Ukrainian government was investigating the oil company his son worked for. Joe felt the investigation was unfair and brought pressure on the Ukrainians to stop the investigation and fire the investigators.
Next, Hunter happened to make friends with some Russians and meet the Moscow mayor’s wife. Hunter, who is an outgoing young man, impressed her. She felt sorry for him having to struggle through life on eighty thousand dollars a month, so she reached in her purse and handed him three million dollars. She didn’t have any spools of thread in her purse, so there were no strings attached.
Back home, Hunter’s Daddy Joe was getting ready to make a trip to China. There was plenty of room on the plane, so he asked Hunter to join him on the trip. Hunter, thinking the trip would give him the opportunity to have a few drinks and an authentic Peking duck dinner, gladly accepted the offer. While Hunter was walking around looking in the Forbidden City, he happened to meet some Chinese who out of kindness gave him thirty million dollars.
Image: Biden’s inauguration. (Note: It’s extremely difficult to find videos of Joe and Hunter together.) YouTube screen grab.
Hunter told friends that he gave half of the money to his dad, the “Big Guy.” The Big Guy, though, has said he didn’t know anything about Hunter’s business operations. As the father of two engineers who make decent salaries, I believe I’d start asking questions if either one of them came to me and said, “Dad, I’ve really been lucky and made a lot of money. I want to give you a few million dollars.” Of course, Joe is a bit senile so it may not have occurred to him to ask where the money came from.
Now, let’s update the Biden experience. Putin started moving troops to the Ukrainian border and it looked as if he was planning a military operation against Ukraine. We don’t know if Biden asked Putin to stop the operation or not, but he didn’t have sufficient influence to get Putin to stop.
In his next move, Biden went to his friends the Chinese, who are on good terms with the Russians, and asked them to talk Putin out of invading Ukraine. The Chinese, who would not be affected by a Russian military operation in Ukraine, promptly went to Putin and told him that Biden had told them he won’t do much about it if Putin invaded Ukraine.
Now, Putin has invaded Ukraine and Biden hasn’t done anything that could be regarded as more than a slap on the wrist and people can’t understand why. Here’s why: Biden can’t do anything because he has painted himself into a corner. If he makes any serious moves affecting either Russia or Ukraine, there are three nations that have the ability to air the dirty laundry about how the Biden family gained its wealth. This would lead to Biden’s impeachment and several members of his family going to prison.
The level of brainwashing in the US has reached almost lethal levels.
@Ted Belman
@FelixQuigley
I think the reason the US and NATO would not give in is because they thought they would benefit in either case:
1) Russia grits its teeth and lives with the status quo with Ukraine and Georgia joining NATO in the future with the possibility of Ukraine getting nuclear weapons;
2) Russia invades, gets sanctioned from here to the Moon, gets its reputation and economy destroyed, gives a reason for further deployment of the NATO forces in Europe, and, hopefully, gets bogged down in its Afghanistan 2 in Ukraine for years.
Also no far right facists supporting putin.
Addendum to my first comment:
Perhaps even more than three decades.
According to Brett Baier (FNC) the NY republicans were intensely pro-slavery and racist, already during U Grant time, until who you know arrived in 2016. Not that different fro the Dems.
@ laura
I have to disagree with you.
The real conservative implies: No Rinos!
None of all this could happen without the collusion with the Rinos!
They are partners (in crimes) in the uniparty: the elitocracy!
This has been going on for at least three decades.
@ Laura
No way no how. Had the US agreed to a neutral Ukraine, there wouldn’t have been a war.
@Felix
I agree. Biden should have given what Putin reasonably demanded ie a neural Ukraine.
This whole thing is being totally distorted. We have already learned that Ukraine was a feeding trough frenzy for the Democrats. That’s not new. It is well hidden by the media.
But that is not the cause of the crisis which has real nuclear weapons danger. So why not get it straight?
The issue is NATO extension into Ukraine.
All the stuff here is just noise. It’s not the essential. And it seeks to divert and confuse.
And the Russians are right. For Russia NATO is an existential issue.
As Meirsheimer says so wisely and intelligently it is a question of N A T I O N
Clinton called Putin a Nazi. Biden called him a cold killer. What kind of nation would do that?
Top rank generals of the US said let’s have nuclear war no problem.
Obama taunted you make nothing anyway at a time US was hitching a ride to the space station
All Biden and Trump had to say was Ukraine will be neutral and never NATO. But they would not.
But we on Israpundit are theoretically in a stronger position now than a week ago. So we can now see where articles like this distorts.
I guess we just have to accept a world under the control of Russia, china and iran. All they have to do is threaten to use nukes and the west is paralyzed to stop them from doing whatever they want or taking anything they want. Israel is doomed. And conservatives in America will say let Israel fall since we don’t want to get into a war with iran which will have nukes. When push comes to shove, American conservatives will not have Israel’s back, since the isolationist viewpoint now predominates.