Checkmate.

Remember when conservatives were gushing about Putin and telling anyone who would listen that they wanted him to be their president? And, that he was playing "chess while president Obama played checkers"?


Well, sadly for my wingnut friends , it seems that Mr. Putin wasn't such a genius after all.


But you have to wonder where all this Putin love came from. Maybe it was seeing him riding bareback on a horse. All that macho imagery. It must have reminded them of their other hero, Ronald Reagan. Or, maybe it was because he was picking fights with their enemy, Barack Obama, and he seemed to be winning at the time. (Seemed to be.)  


Anyway, things haven't been going so well for Vladi of late.


"A funny thing happened on the way to Vladimir Putin running strategic laps around the West. Russia's economy imploded.


The latest news is that Russia's central bank raised interest rates from 10.5 to 17 percent at an emergency 1 a.m. meeting in an attempt to stop the ruble, which is down 50 percent on the year against the dollar, from falling any further. It's a desperate move to save Russia's currency that comes at the cost of sacrificing Russia's economy.


But even that wasn't enough. After a brief rally, the ruble resumed its cliff-diving ways on Tuesday, falling another 14 percent to a low of 80 rubles per dollar. It was 60 rubles per dollar just the day before. The problem is simple. Oil is still falling, and ordinary Russians don't want to hold their money in rubles even if they get paid 17 percent interest to do so. In other words, there's a well-justified panic. So now Russia is left with the double whammy of a collapsing currency and exorbitant interest rates. Checkmate.


It's a classic kind of emerging markets crisis. It's only a small simplification, you see, to say that Russia doesn't so much have an economy as it has an oil exporting business that subsidizes everything else. That's why the combination of more supply from the United States, and less demand from Europe, China, and Japan has hit them particularly hard. Cheaper oil means Russian companies have fewer dollars to turn into rubles, which is just another way of saying that there's less demand for rubles—so its price is falling. It hasn't helped, of course, that sanctions over Russia's incursion into Ukraine have already left Russia short on dollars.


Add it all up, and the ruble has fallen something like 22 percent against the dollar the past month, with 11 percent of that coming on Monday alone. As you can see below, the Russian ruble has fallen even further than the Ukrainian hryvnia or Brent oil has this year. The only asset, and I use that word lightly, that's done worse than the ruble's 50 percent fall is Bitcoin, which is a fake currency that techno-utopians insist is the future we don't know we want.


And this is only going to get worse. Russia, you see, is stuck in an economic catch-22. Its economy needs lower interest rates to push up growth, but its companies need higher interest rates to push up the ruble and make all the dollars they borrowed not worth so much. So, to use a technical term, they're screwed no matter what they do. If they had kept interest rates low, then the ruble would have continued to disintegrate, inflation would have spiked, and big corporations would have defaulted—but at least growth wouldn't have fallen quite so much." [Source]


So maybe he isn't the grandmaster wingnuts perceive him to be. Maybe he exposed his Queen and Obama took it with a checkers move. It wouldn't be the first time. Obama has been beating wingnuts at their own game for eight years.






 

Shameless politics, and get that Negro away from me.

Well this didn't take long. The bodies of those who tragically lost their lives in that Malaysian Air crash in Eastern Ukraine have not been removed from the fields that the poor souls perished in, and already the political vultures are out foaming at the mouth and gnashing their teeth.


They are blaming Barack Obama for this tragedy (not Vladimir Putin) because this is what having a serious case of derangement syndrome can do to you.


From Allen West, to John McCain, they were fighting each other to get in front of a microphone and a camera to take their shots.


"It’s just been cowardly, it’s a cowardly administration that failed to give the Ukrainians weapons with which to defend themselves,” McCain said. 

The former Republican opponent to Obama’s 2008 campaign said these comments after Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashed into Ukraine, causing the deaths of nearly 300 people. But while rumors surface that Russian separatists were responsible for shooting down the commercial jet, McCain is taking aim at the president.

“I don’t understand this president,” McCain said Thursday on Fox News’ “Hannity.” “The crisis on the border and he did the fundraisers, the fundraisers in New York while there are major major conflicts, not to mention the loss of American lives reported … I do not understand it.”


He added, “This is what we used to call in the military AWOL.”


McCain suggested that if reports prove that Russia was behind the attacks, the United States should “impose the harshest possible sanctions on Vladimir Putin and Russia.” [Source]


They were in rare form.


Forgetting, of course, that their hero, Ronald Reagan, took four days to respond to a similar civilian plane being shot down by the Russians. For the record, Barack Obama took twenty four hours. Can you imagine if Barack Obama had taken four days to respond to this tragedy?


So Reagan didn't want to leave his ranch and Barack Obama doesn't want to cut his fundraisers short.


CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER:"What is the president's reaction? You said what matters is not where he is. He's had no reaction. He's had no reaction to anything that I can tell in the last six months. Look, it isn't as if we're going to go to war with Russia, but we've denied Ukraine lethal weaponry on the grounds that we don't want to escalate the conflict. The rebels and the Russians are killing Ukrainians in large numbers, by shooting them out of the sky. The least the president could do is make a damned decision for once in his life and announce that we are now going to supply lethal weapons to assist the Ukrainians to defend themselves and to complete the offensive that is now going on in Eastern Ukraine to actually destroy the rebel insurgents."


Hmmm, "lethal weapons to assist Ukrainians". Why? So that they can use those "lethal weapons" to achieve their own agenda when they see fit? I don't think so.


One of the truly sad aspects of this tragedy is that some really good and influential people who are actually contributing to humanity lost their lives. The irony is, of course, that the people who contribute nothing and who do more to destroy society by their actions can only offer more vacuous and meaningless commentary while the gown ups seek solutions.


Finally, I have to chase the big R before I sign off tonight.


"Florida man Thomas Thorpe, charged with attempted first-degree murder, appeared in court today to enter in a not guilty plea. But most memorable from his court appearance was Thorpe ranting about the black public defender next to him and how he didn’t want a “Negro standing next to me.”


Thorpe allegedly stabbed someone at a bus stop. In court today, he said, “I pleaded not guilty and I don’t want this Negro standing next to me. I don’t want a Negro standing next to me.”


And it wasn’t just that public defender he objected to, Thorpe refused any defense attorney whatsoever. The judge asked, “Do you understand what an attorney is and what they do?” Thorpe replied, “Yes, they screwed us.” [Source]


You gotta love racists.


Good luck Mr. Thorpe, hopefully you will get the white lawyer you desire. For your sake, though, I just hope that the facts and the evidence are on your side. If not, that "Negro" lawyer will be the least of your problems.


Mr. McCain's pic from itsybitsysteps.com






 


 















 

Glossing over history for "The Gipper."

Folks, please excuse me if I don't get through this post, I am still tearing up over the touching way DeSean Jackson and a couple of other Eagles responded to that young man who was bullied recently here in Philly on The View. Fellows, that was serious field Negro behavior.

So let's talk about the man conservatives pray to every night, Ronald Reagan. This week is a big deal to all those who love the man who will soon have his image on Mount Rushmore. "The Gipper" will be 100 on Sunday, and you would think that he freed the slaves and wrote the Declaration Of Independence all by himself.

Sorry folks, but, once again, I have to be the contrarian.

Reagan the fiscal conservative? Sorry, Ronald Reagan was responsible for the largest tax hike in California's history when he became governor.

Under Reagan's watch A-merry-ca's debt climbed from 712 billion to 2 trillion, and "The Gipper" never presented a balanced budget to Congress in his eight years in office. (That,by the way, is historian Kevin Starr talking, not the field.) And yes, it was under Reagan that unemployment hit 10% for the first time since the Great depression.

Under Reagan's watch, (whether you believe the "Dark Alliance "story or not) the crack epidemic exploded in this country. And, generations later, urban A-merry-ca is still reeling from its effects.

Reagan's assault on labor unions in this country created a climate for cheap labor which led to A-merry-can jobs going abroad. Under "The Gipper" the homeless population exploded to over two million. Poverty rose by over 25%, and we can thank "The Gipper" for putting our beloved A-merry-c on a path to Third Worlds status.--- Very rich folks; very poor ones, and a weak middle class.

Issues of race and civil rights? Don't even get me started. "The Gipper" embraced the apartheid government in South Africa. (Did I mention that he launched his presidential bid from Philadelphia, Mississippi?) He kept up a constant assault on affirmative action, cut funding for social programs which disproportionately affected black folks, and he fired members of the Civil Rights Commission who did not see eye to eye with his look away policies on matters of race. (Did I mention that he launched his presidential bid from Philadelphia, Mississippi?)
Oh, and for good measure; he invaded that big bad Island of Grenada just to show those darkies down in the Windies just how tough A-merry-ca was. He opposed the Voting Right Act because he said it was "humiliating the south", (Did I mention that he launched his presidential bid from Philadelphia, Mississippi?) and he sided with Barry Goldwater in opposing the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Nice.

I won't even get into Ollie North, Iran- Contra, and his horrendous foreign policy as it relates to Lain America. (Read this link.) "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall". Yes, he tore it down, but no thanks to you. We can thank those fighters in the mountains of Afghanistan (who just so happen to be giving us hell right now) for that.

"I would rather have Roosevelt in a wheelchair than Reagan and Bush on a horse"

Jesse, try telling that to the people who worship at the altar of "The Gipper". Soon, that horse will be on Mount Rushmore, and the B movie actor with the gift of gab will be sitting right on top of it.