At the White House petition site:

We petition the Obama Administration to:

Revoke non-nuclear status of Ukraine and assist Ukrainian Military in obtaining short-range nuclear weapons.

1. Due to the violent and aggressive nature of Russian Federation intervention to Crimea impose the same level of economic sanctions on Russian Federation as the ones currently in effect imposed on Iran until Ukraine territory is restored in the same borders as at December 5, 1994.

2. Assist Ukraine in claiming with International Courts damages sustained due to the intervention of Russian Federation in Crimea.

3. Revoke non-nuclear status of Ukraine and assist Ukrainian Military in obtaining short-range nuclear weapons, anti-air craft defense systems, rocket propelled grenades, and hand held Stinger surface to air missiles in quantities sufficient to be able to deflect Russian aggression.

Created: Mar 19, 2014

Issues: Defense, Economy, Foreign Policy

Signatures needed by April 19, 2014 to reach goal of 100,000 99,828

Total signatures on this petition 172

[emphasis added]

One hundred seventy-two people at this point.

Right. That’ll make the world safer and more stable.

SMP is meant to provide a place to deal with Missouri’s politics, but every once and awhile I just can’t resist writing a little something about stuff that isn’t specific to Missouri, to wit, Sarah Palin’s comments on President’s Obama sartorial style. Palin wants to paint the President as weak on foreign policy – in particular, the Ukrainian situation – and she seeks to emphasize this opinion by describing his jeans as “mom jeans.” Although I’m not sure I’ve ever seen the President in what I’d call mom jeans, Palin probably should know. After all, she’s not only a mom but such an astute fashionista that she managed to turn her disastrous vice-presidential run into an extended shopping spree, updating her and her family’s wardrobes with pricey designer duds paid for out of campaign funds.

Palin also thinks that Putin is a superior leader, evidently because he wrestles bears. In this opinion she echoes – admittedly in her own inimitably cartoonishly macho way – others of her conservative brethren who think that a pugnacious, shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later, strongman ruler like Putin is just what the doctor ordered. Bear in mind that these folks also gushed over President Dick Cheney … er, George Bush, while he (they?) led us into an expensive and unnecessary war. I think this might be why we also call conservatives reactionary. In Europe I believe that people who swoon in the presence of strongmen leaders are often called fascists, but the term has been so abused by American Tea Partiers that it has lost all currency in the U.S. As Duane Graham of The Erstwhile Conservative observes about conservative Putin worship, ” the fact that a Russian thug is praised by a prominent Republican for acting like a thug, even a decisive one, is enough to turn one’s stomach.”

Personally, I would prefer a leader who outsmarts bears instead of wrestling them, and so far, I think that President Obama might be about to outsmart the Russian bear, Putin, whose bellicose actions may ultimately retain a Crimean sea port for Rusia, but who has imperiled Russia’s already fragile economy in the process, alienated Russians at home and Russian allies, while ensuring that the rest of the Ukraine will remain a stubbornly Westward leaning country on the Russian border. So who cares what kind of jeans President Obama wears as long as he and  his foreign policy team are able to make a palatable hash out of the dog’s breakfast Putin seeks to serve up in the Ukraine?

 

First question. Do you have oil?

Second question. If not, does a lot of oil from other places flow through pipelines in your country?

Third question. Is someone considering building a pipeline in your country so that a lot of oil from other countries will flow through it?

A recent White House petition on Ukraine (among several):

We petition the Obama Administration to:

Enter military intervention to Ukraine.

We, people of Ukraine, because of becoming more frequent and systematic violations of democracy and freedom of speech by public and police agents, and looking on the bloody acceleration of actions of protest in support European integration, taking into account the decision role of the United States of America in a worldwide policy and reputation of the USA, as a defender of democratic rights and freedoms in the whole world, we ask you, as a commander-in-chief by the armed forces of the USA, to enter military intervention to Ukraine.

The Ukrainian people wish to live in democratic European community and appeals to your help for the construction of base principles of democracy in our country.

Created: Nov 30, 2013

Issues: Defense, Firearms, Foreign Policy

Signatures needed by December 30, 2013 to reach goal of 100,000 96,600

Total signatures on this petition 3,400

Someone wants the American public to learn more geography.

From the U.S. Energy Information Administration:

   Ukraine was the seventh-largest energy consumer in Europe and Eurasia in 2010. More than half of the country’s primary energy supply comes from its uranium and coal resources, although natural gas also plays an important role in its energy mix.

   In 2010, Ukraine generated a total of 176 billion kilowatthours (BkWh) of electricity and consumed approximately 150 BkWh. The country is heavily dependent on nuclear energy-its fifteen reactors generate roughly half of the total electric power supply. The remainder of the electric power is generated with conventional thermal sources (45 percent), hydropower (7 percent), with marginal volumes contributed by wind generation.

   Ukraine consumed approximately 2.3 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of natural gas in 2011, with domestic production accounting for approximately 30 percent of the total at 700 billion cubic feet (Bcf). The remainder of supply is made up by Russian natural gas, imported through the Bratstvo (Brotherhood) and Soyuz pipelines.

   Its geographic position and proximity to Russia explain Ukraine’s importance as a natural gas transit country, through which volumes flow to Austria, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Turkey. In the past, disputes between Russia and Ukraine over natural gas supplies, prices, and debts have resulted in interruptions to Russia’s natural gas exports through Ukraine, with the latest one occurring in 2009.

   Recent discoveries of shale gas deposits in Ukraine provide the country with a possible means to diversify its gas supplies away from Russia. In January 2013, Shell agreed to explore an area which the government estimates holds about 4 Tcf of shale natural gas in reserves. Current plans include development of shale gas resources for domestic consumption and exports to Western Europe by 2020.

   Only a relatively small portion of the country’s total consumption is accounted for by petroleum and other liquid fuels. In 2011, Ukraine consumed 300,000 barrels per day (bbl/d) of liquid fuels, but produced only 82,000 bbl/d. The remainder was imported mostly from Russia, with smaller volumes originating in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan.

[emphasis added]

Maybe one or two out of three?