Slate: Don’t Accept Putin’s Version of History. The West didn’t provoke Russia. It gave it more credit than it deserved.

Excellent article by Slate's Anne Applebaum. Since the fall of the USSR, the US and NATO did everything to reassure Russia and make Russia feel like a part of what was going on in the world. Putin and his government did nothing but take advantage of that. Ms. Applebaum lays out the history.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2014/10/nato_and_eu_expansion_didn_t_provoke_vladimir_putin_american_triumphalism.html?wpisrc=obinsite 

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But one Western policy stands out as a phenomenal success, particularly when measured against the low expectations with which it began: The integration of Central Europe and the Baltic States into the European Union and NATO. Thanks to this double project, more than 90 million people have enjoyed relative safety and relative prosperity for more than two decades, in a region whose historic instability helped launch two world wars.

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For the record: No treaties prohibiting NATO expansion were ever signed with Russia. No promises were broken. Nor did the impetus for NATO expansion come from a “triumphalist” Washington. On the contrary, Poland's first efforts to apply in 1992 were rebuffed. I well remember the angry reaction of the U.S. ambassador to Warsaw at the time. But Poland and others persisted, precisely because they were already seeing signs of the Russian revanchism to come.

When the slow, cautious expansion did eventually take place, constant efforts were made to reassure Russia. No NATO bases were ever placed in the new member states, and until 2013 no exercises were conducted there. A Russia-NATO agreement in 1997 promised no movement of nuclear installations. A Russia-NATO council was set up in 2002. In response to Russian objections, Ukraine and Georgia were in fact denied NATO membership plans in 2008.

Meanwhile, not only was Russia not “humiliated” during this era, it was given de facto “great power” status, along with the Soviet U.N. Security Council seat and Soviet embassies. Russia also received Soviet nuclear weapons, some transferred from Ukraine in 1994 in exchange for Russian recognition of Ukraine's borders. Presidents Clinton and Bush both treated their Russian counterparts as fellow “great power” leaders and invited them to join the G-8—although Russia, neither a large economy nor a democracy, did not qualify.
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(more at above link)

Canadian: "You Americans have no idea just how good you have it with Obama...When you are done with Obama can you send him up our way?"

VETO! VETO! VETO! Show the Republican congress all the courtesy they showed the White house these last six years.

I have a Present for the President in the wake of 2014 and note Mr. President, there are more where this one came from.

Update on my Predictions, Karl Rove, plus Nate Silver says pretty much the same thing I did. Republicans are going to do well in 2014 because the close races are mostly on their turf (Red States) as a result of 2008

On the show I aired on October 26th & 27th (See http://steveleser.blogspot.com/2014/10/transcript-of-my-election-2014.html ), I said that Republicans are not going to win seats because of some national agreement with them on the issues or that they belong in power. Nate agrees with me that this is not a wave election for Republicans and lists below in the excerpt of his article some of the reasoning why the "Wave" narrative doesn't work.

As far as my predicting how the senate will end up is concerned, races in two states have trended in the wrong direction for Democrats since I made my predictions on October 26th-27th and those states are Iowa and Georgia. Georgia polling had Michelle Nunn a few points ahead as a result of Perdue making his comment about how great outsourcing is but that bounce for Nunn did not stick and Perdue now seems to be a few points ahead. In Iowa, there seemed to be a trend toward Braley at the time of my show and now that trend seems to be reversed.

As it stands now it seems like Republicans will gain seven seats and thus the senate will be 52 Republicans and 48 Democrats and those who caucus with them assuming all of the sampling assumptions by polling agencies are correct. In Iowa, the large early voting turnout by Democrats may confound the polls and yet result in Braley being elected and many other Democrats as well, but as I always say, if your side winning an election depends on the polls being wrong, you are not in a good place.

If Republicans take control of the senate, one of the things that will happen is the reemergence of Karl Rove as the premier kingmaker for Republicans. Rove's reputation took a big hit in election 2012 both with the fact that most of the candidates promoted by his SuperPAC, American Crossroads, lost, and his abysmal performance on Megyn Kelly's show on election night trying to say that the folks on every channel who had called Ohio for Obama were wrong. Kelly did a particularly good job of skewering him and as I have said to several folks, you underestimate her at your peril.

But it was Karl Rove's American Crossroads, with help from the Koch brothers, that initiated the ad blitz this season that completely reversed the senate races in several of the closest contests including Iowa, Colorado, Arkansas and Louisiana, and made it much closer in North Carolina and New Hampshire. The GOP will owe control of the senate to Rove.


http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/is-2014-a-republican-wave/

Is 2014 A Republican Wave?

By NATE SILVER

Complication No. 1. Some prominent Republican incumbents are likely to lose. Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas is no better than even money to keep his seat against independent Greg Orman. Incumbent Republican governors are underdogs — some by slim margins — in Alaska, Florida, Kansas, Maine and Pennsylvania, while Rick Snyder of Michigan and Scott Walker of Wisconsin are likely but not certain to survive.

Complication No. 2. Republicans are largely playing on home turf. The average Senate race this year is being held in a state where Barack Obama won just 46 percent of the vote in 2012. In the House, meanwhile, the median Congressional district is Republican-leaning. (Democrats tend to bepacked into geographically compact, urban areas; this tendency is sometimes enhanced by gerrymandering.) A method of assessing the score probably needs to account for this.

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"Most Senate seats on the ballot this year were last contested in 2008, an extraordinarily strong Democratic year."
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