- Timmons Expresses Support for DEI’s Doppelganger for Hiring Practices in Washington
- Should the US Rethink Its Mid-East Policies?
- Is Another Child Tax Credit Expansion Really the Best Way To Help Families?
- The Two-State Solution for Israel is No Solution at All
- A New Fiscal Commission Must Heed the Lesson of '97
- The Evils of Socialism
- Biden's Corporate Tax Hike: Populism Versus Economic Literacy
- Why is Greenville County Council Pickpocketing Us Again?
- The Morgan and Timmons Firey Faceoff in SC’s 4th Congressional District Race
- Advertising Rates and Specifications
- Danger: The Proposed South Carolina "Health Czar" Legislation will be Hazardous to Your FREEDOM!
- The Tucker Carlson Interview of Russian President Vladimir Putin
- Is US Rep. William Timmons Bloating His Voting Record with Out-of-State Proxies?
- Belgrade, NATO Expansion, Color Revolutions
- Insights into the Russian View of Russian History
The Demonization of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin
- By Mike Scruggs
- Category: Mike Scruggs' Column
Russophobia as U.S. Foreign Policy and Media Culture
May 2, 2023, a timely revision April 22, 2024
A few days before Tucker Carlson was dismissed from Fox News, Fox News 9:00 PM host Sean Hannity began his evening show with a statement something like, “We know Putin is evil.” Soon thereafter, Fox News host and contributor Mark Levin chimed in with a few phrases condemning and demonizing Putin. Do we know Putin is evil or is it that we are constantly told by Deepstate politicians and their captive media that Putin is evil? What is the objective basis of such a statement? Would the assumed facts hold up to cross examination and analysis? Given the establishment media’s failure to make the obvious connections between the February 24, 2022, Russian invasion and the February 2014 U.S. State Department-backed coup and regime change in Ukraine, reasonable people have formidable cause to doubt the wisdom and factual basis of such careless and inflammatory language. Moreover, the resulting eight years of continuing war and cultural genocide perpetrated by the new coup-based Ukrainian government against the large Russian ethnic population concentrated in eastern and southern Ukraine gives us a righteous discomfort with such defamation. Both Hannity and Levin also engaged in an episode of this sort of Putin demonizing in February of this year. Moreover, in two previous interviews with President Trump, Hannity had pressed Trump very hard to condemn Putin. Trump, to his credit, refused to engage in such dangerous rhetoric. First of all, Trump is strong enough to maintain his objectivity, and second, smart enough not to make statements that would wreck any possibilities of future negotiations with Putin or the Russian Federation on Ukraine or any other issue.
- Hits: 35
Tucker Carlson Interview of Vladimir Putin - Part 9
- By Mike Scruggs
- Category: Mike Scruggs' Column
US Leadership and Promises, Ukrainian Cultural Conflict, Radical Influences on Zelensky
At the end of Part 8 of this series, Tucker Carlson had asked Vladimir Putin whether working with different U.S. presidents had made a difference in US-Russian relations. Putin said that his relations with G.W. Bush were cordial even though Bush had pushed for Ukrainian membership in NATO in 2008, and that his relations with Trump were cordial as well. Relations with Biden had evidently been more difficult.
Vladimir Putin continues: It is not about the personality of the leader; it is about the elites’ mindset. If the idea of domination at any cost, based also on forceful actions, dominates the American society, nothing will change; it will only get worse. But if, in the end, one comes to the awareness that the world has been changing due to objective circumstances, and that one should be able to adapt to them in time, using the advantages that the U.S. still has today, then, perhaps, something may change.
- Hits: 184
Tucker Carlson Interview of Vladimir Putin - Part 8
- By Mike Scruggs
- Category: Mike Scruggs' Column
The Changing Global Economy, Sanctions, Endangered Dollar, and BRICS
At the end of Part 7, Vladimir Putin was explaining how U.S. driven NATO sanctions on Russia were creating painful economic hardships on the German economy and German people.
Commentary: Although sanctions were a major factor in a 1.2 percent decline in the Russian economy in 2022, Russian economic growth was 3.6 percent in 2023, exceeding the U.S. and most European nations. According to the European Union Commission, Germany is estimated to have had a real GDP contraction of 0.3 percent in 2023, and real growth is not expected to be over 0.3 percent in 2024. In my opinion, this figure is very optimistic considering Germany’s critical energy shortage. European Union economic growth overall was only 0.8 percent. An optimistic projection for 2024 is 1.4 percent. The International Monetary Fund estimates Russian real economic growth for 2024 will be 2.6 percent. There are four major reasons why Russia has prospered despite US/NATO/EU sanctions. First, the Russians had prepared their banking and financial systems for sanctions. Second, they were remarkably successful in shifting their trade to China and other non-NATO nations. Third, the Russians have a very low Debt to GDP ratio of only 12 percent and near zero deficit spending. They are thus in much better fiscal condition than most Western nations. Fourth, they were able to ramp up military-industrial production very quickly, which also gave them significant weapons, ammunition, and logistical advantages over Ukraine and NATO.
- Hits: 327
Tucker Carlson Interview of Vladimir Putin - Part 7
- By Mike Scruggs
- Category: Mike Scruggs' Column
US-Russia Relations, Nordstream Sabotage, German Economic Suffering
In Part 6, Tucker Carlson had asked Vladimir Putin what he had told U.S. President Joe Biden several weeks before the Russian Special Military Operation began on February 24, 2022. This contact between Putin and Biden occurred on December 7, 2021, and possibly December 30 and January 8, 2022—described by British media as mutual warnings.
Tucker Carlson: What did he say?
Vladimir Putin: Ask him, please. It is easier for you, you are a citizen of the United States, go and ask him. It is not appropriate for me to comment on our conversation.
Tucker Carlson: But you haven’t spoken to him since before February of 2022? [Since December 2021 and possibly January 8, 2022]
Vladimir Putin: No, we haven't spoken. Certain contacts are being maintained though. Speaking of which, do you remember what I told you about my proposal to work together on a missile defense system?
Tucker Carlson: Yes.
- Hits: 517
Tucker Carlson Interview of Vladimir Putin - Part 6
- By Mike Scruggs
- Category: Mike Scruggs' Column
True Causes of the War including Banderist Ukrainian Nationalist Influences
In part 5 of the Tucker Carlson interview of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Carlson had asked Putin about how the Ukraine War started.
Commentary: The continuous propaganda narrative of the West has been that Russian military intervention in Ukraine on February 24, 2022, was an “unprovoked invasion.” Putin explained that Ukraine had started the war eight years before, following the February 2014 Maidan Revolution and coup, in which elected President Viktor Yanukovych was deposed by mob violence that led to civil war. Over14,000 people were killed. In this war, the Ukrainian Army ruthlessly attempted to prevent secession of several Russian-speaking oblasts, most notably the two Donbass oblasts of Donetsk and Lugansk. Ukrainian artillery has been responsible for killing at least 5,000 Russian-speaking civilians in the Donetsk oblast alone. The Ukrainian government passed legislation that made Russian-speakers second class citizens and commenced a program of cultural genocide to rid Ukraine of all Russian influence in language, religion, culture, and politics. Only about 60 percent of Ukrainians consider Ukrainian their native language. Nearly 40 percent consider their ethnic and cultural heritage either Russian or mixed Russian and Ukrainian. Putin and Russian leadership also strongly viewed Ukraine becoming a member of NATO as an existential threat to Russian Federation national security.
- Hits: 465
Mike Scruggs is the author of two books: The Un-Civil War: Shattering the Historical Myths; and Lessons from the Vietnam War: Truths the Media Never Told You, and over 600 articles on military history, national security, intelligent design, genealogical genetics, immigration, current political affairs, Islam, and the Middle East.
He holds a BS degree from the University of Georgia and an MBA from Stanford University. A former USAF intelligence officer and Air Commando, he is a decorated combat veteran of the Vietnam War, and holds the Distinguished Flying Cross, Purple Heart, and Air Medal. He is a retired First Vice President for a major national financial services firm and former Chairman of the Board of a classical Christian school.
Click the website below to order books. http://www.universalmediainc.org/books.htm.