Vlad, Vlad, more Vlad

     Mr. Putin, "president" of Russia, has been grabbing headlines relentlessly all week.  After the referendum vote, under close watch of armed Russian soldiers, came out 96% in favor of annexation to Russia of the Crimean Peninsula of Ukraine,  members of the EU and America have been fumbling along, trying to look like they will make a serious response to the power play/land grab by the little Slavic Napolean imitator.
      Pundits write of Vlad's displeasure with the break up of Mother Russia in 1991, when messers Gorbachov and Yeltsin gave the word that Russia was no longer a Soviet Union and the separate "republics" were now independent states.  So, for the last 23 years, Vlad has been plotting to reunify the old USSR.   " Back in the USSR" is what the Beatles' tune recalled.   Will we get back there?  back to an east-vs west Cold War?  We who survived the Cold War years hope not.   It seemed that the Russkies were willing to modernize; to give up their cultural paranoia, their isolationist thinking, and the brutish thuggery that characterizes their ideas on government.
     The question of the day, similar to the questions of 1937-38: will he stop?  Is he satisfied?  Can we sigh relief that this is the end of his taking?  His aggression?  Many thinkers this is only the beginning.
   Time will tell, but don't look for any great pronouncements from the White House.   Obama wants to sell Obamacare, especially with the signup deadline 2 weeks away.   His foreign policy strategy is one of small steps, measured words that really accomplish little, apparently.  With Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Israel, Egypt, and Cuba/Venezuela on the foreign policy plate, John Kerry and Obama have a full  schedule.   And the recession holds on.   Not easy being the Prez.