Yes, that wasn't a good move, no doubt about it. This however is, as most countries would declare, a internal matter of the Ukraine and without a doubt, something you can talk about and finding a political solution. Go on the streets and protest peacefully, as the other side has done and they will have to listen.

But as far as I'm aware, there was no threats towards Crimea, easter Ukraine or the pro-russian side of the country and therefor absolutely no justification to send a military force in. Besides of that, Putin had several other ways to put on pressure, like cutting the gas because of instability / security reasons - he decided to play hardball and Russia now stands more isolated then anytime within the last 20 years.

EU&US got a new old big scary enemy to distract population from other problems. Ukraine with a crumbling economy will fall into loving embrace of EU. All governments will celebrate victory. Putin will fix falling rating before the economic collapse in Russia. Then Putin will give multibillion "credit" to Ukraine, which would be in EU soon.
Everyone will be happy, except the population of Ukraine and Russia with collapsed economy. But who cares about them?

Not saying this in an aggressive way at all, because I think it's unfortunate, but the US population couldn't really care less about this. Even on news networks the Oscars are getting just as much coverage as the Ukraine crisis.

Which, along with a slew of other reasons, is why military intervention will never, ever be on the table, barring an invasion of a NATO country (which Putin would never do). Americans don't care and will never support it.

While other means (cutting gas) are too unreliable, I agree, that he succumbed to this (minor) provocations too easily and out of proportion.
But also, he sure knows a lot more about this situation. I know that I don't like to be in his position right now.
Exactly.

Yes, reading Ukrainian media one could get impression that US are almost agreed to supply weapons and send troops over, and then I open US media and read more about Oscar and Student Film Festival among other things than about situation in Ukraine. US have too many other things to worry about, starting a new war is not one of them.

Exactly.

The only way it would escalate to US military action is if we had to back Europe up in some way, either as a supplement to NATO or EU forces due to a further Russian military invasion. It's not going to happen over Crimea, just like it didn't happen over Abkhazia.

And Putin knows that, which is why his analysis of the situation lead him to approve Crimean occupation. One assumes he expected and is prepared to suffer the economic and diplomatic repercussions.

I didn't write that the population needs enemies.:)

I don't think this will be enough to fix his rating and distract population from economic collapse (which was inevitable anyway and will be much harder now with the whole Crimea thing),
but he sure would like to use anything to distract population, and it is quite possible that is one of the reasons why he acted so easily and quickly, yes.

There certainly was an implied threat. Apart from the language law which was bad enough and a sign there was to be no real reconciliation but just triumphalism, there was also a move to ban the two political parties popular in the eastern regions (party of regions, communists) who just happened to be the old government, and the political rivals of the new one. Given how quickly they want to hold new elections that would effectively disenfranchise the south and east more than they already have been by having the President they democratically elected set aside by the western Ukrainians- and hand automatic victory to the western half of Ukraine. That's quite apart from the Svoboda and Right Sector chaps, who are, at best, strongly Nationalist and anti Russian (or any other linguistic/ ethnic minority).

There was also talk of "punishing" separatist sentiment from the interim President just after the take over, to whit: "Anyone held responsible for separatist moves should be punished, his press service quoted Mr Turchynov as saying in a later statement, Reuters news agency reports."

Separatistic moves or facing a political opposing government, is hardly on the same page. If the roles would have been switched, I'm rather sure Mr. Yanukovych would have warned about separatistic sentiments, too.

I'm not gonna claim the "new" government did all the right things. Someone calling to ban the opposing political parties isn't a "strong indication", certainly not stronger then Yanukovych claiming the people on Maidan as terrorists or foreign forces - if that's justification to send troops into another country, we'd see this happen at least 20 times per year all over the world.
If Russia would have send additional troops just into their base in Sevastopol, everyone could justify and understand that - even the Ukrainians would had to accept it, even though teeth-gnashingly. But moving onto foreign soil, is quite another step.

yep its been somewhat hard today to find tv stations covering it. Really only 1 or 2 from the most part that i could find. Fox news and msnbc didnt even seem to alter their programming at all from what i saw.

Not sure what Merkel plans to learn from a "fact finding mission" but it at least is a good sign that Putin doesn't plan to fire any shots.

1. About the law that "cancelled" russian language (what kind of idiot used that word?). As far as I know this _cancellation_ was vetoed and I strongly believe Moscow would find any other reason to do what they're doing even without this stupid stunt.
2. Svoboda and Right Sector, despite some of their foolish voiced opinions actually never were anti-russian. Anti-commies? Sure. But anti-russian? No. Some xenophobic fools exist there, but they don't represent the majority.
3. Party of Regions and Communist Party weren't actually banned anyway. Though Commies should be banned just because they're not real communists. Only people who feel great nostalgia for USSR will vote for them even now. They are cowards and on a payroll of a former ruling party.
4. It's so russian to name Crimea a russian land, after what they've done to crimean tatars in 1944, almost desolating some regions of peninsula of people. This also was the reason Ukrainian Soviet Republic got Crimea under its jurisdiction later, during Nikita Kruschov era. To encourage people from the northern lands to move in.

Typical imperialistic beahviour. First conquer area, slaughter inhabitants, bring your own people in and after couple of decades say that because there are so much of your own people living in there, it is actually part of your land. Russia has been doing this basically whole time of it's existence. Ask finnish, estonian, latvian, polish, ukrainean, georgian or japanese how they feel about this "peaceful" neighbour.