Russian PM Vladimir Putin (aka Vlad Putrid) has long been a target of our diatribes. He is an anti-Democracy fascist ex KGB thug and continues to run the country in the manner of the old Soviets, with the able assist of his lackey Dmitry Medvedev. This week the Russian twin terrors put the kabosh on an entire legal industry - the gaming industry - by closing all casinos and betting parlors as of today. Yup, in an economic crisis, they are foregoing $1 - 2 billion in tax dollars and putting hundreds of thousands out of work. Sure they plan on allowing four regions to open casinos - except there are no casinos even under construction in these areas, which are thousands of miles from civilization.

Now we all know Russia was organized chaos for years after the Commies left power. Organized crime, corruption, murders, declining life expectancy. Actually all these continue but the leadership is determined to quash whatever behavior they can. Enter the end of gambling, which of course will continue underground and be even more in the grip of organized crime. Brilliant!

In the meantime, Medvedev is now telling Russians to “say no to vodka” according to Reuters. If you’re not familiar with the stuff, imagine how much water you drink. Now apply that to Russia. That’s how much vodka people drink - hence the life expectancy hovering around Guinea-Bissau levels for adult men. It’s a good idea, sure, but also troubling that the Russian government has decided to be the ultimate nanny.

Of course, they’ve tried this before with poor results - take it away Reuters: “A 1986 anti-alcohol campaign by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev led to a boom in illegal production of low-quality alcohol, and Russians learned to drink perfumes and other household liquids made from alcohol.” Fantastic.

Lastly, there is the sad tale of Yaroslav Yaroshenko, the editor-in-chief of the monthly Korruptsiya i Prestupnost (Corruption and Crime), who died as a result of head wounds sustained when an unidentified thug beat him in the stairwell of his apartment building. Of course the assailant remains at large. Of course this was payback for reporting on official corruption, most recently in a regional police department. Chances that the killer will be caught and actually sent to jail - nearly nil.

“Russia is the third deadliest country in the world for journalists and the ninth worst in solving reporters’ killings, according to CPJ research.”

Russia is a pretend democracy with big big problems. We feel for the people but they have invited this upon themselves whereas other former Commie states like Poland, Czech Republic even Romania have steadfastly worked to improve both security and economic futures for their people. It is really unacceptable that the Russians can’t get their act together and instead have allowed themselves to be hoodwinked by the likes of Vlad Putrid & Co.

If you guessed Iran, Mark Sanford and Michael Jackson, you hit the nail on the head. A set of stats from Pew Research Center sheds light on what our media obsesses over and the results are pretty disappointing. Stories are deemed big not out of public necessity but because they push Americans’ buttons. Ooh a dead celebrity! Ooh evil Iranians! It also shows the tendency of outlets like CNN to go wall to wall in their coverage of things to the detriment of less sexy topics.

In the meantime, the big losers were healthcare and the economic situation - a combined 16% of all news coverage was devoted to these life or death issues. Thanks a lot news media. 

Yup, Franken has overcome all the odds and GOP obstruction to win a unanimous 5-0 ruling in the State Supreme Court. Coleman wants to run for something in the future so bets are he’ll finally back down. With Al in the Senate, look for him to be the key vote on some serious upcoming votes. Can’t wait until he is sworn in.

In the meantime, the Repubs just can’t catch a break. It turns out that stalwart conservo-Christian SC Gov. Mark Sanford is now admitting he was a liar last week and that he had many more liaisons with his Argentine lover. Oops. It also turns out he “crossed the line” with other women over the years. The local GOP bigwigs are fast tiring of his act, not at least because he is turning out to be a huge liability longterm as the media churns his story to death.

Some day the Republicans will pick themselves up off the mat. But it ain’t today folks, not by a long shot.

Apparently, Sanford’s marriage has been in trouble for a while and now he’s copped to an affair with a friend he met “innocently” eight years ago. According to Sanford it became something more last year and they’ve met three times since then. His wife knew about the affair but of course kept mum about it. Then he suggested he might go hiking and disappeared setting off a media frenzy culminating in today’s press conference. So what happened in the last few days?

Well, while people wondered where their governor was, he was in Argentina with his lover trying to figure out whether to throw it all away for her - as he put it during the presser “I spent the last five days of my life crying in Argentina.” He says “from a heart level there was something real” but he chose to come back due to his responsibilities to his wife, four sons and the state of South Carolina. Clearly he would have chosen to stay with his lover if it weren’t for his responsibilities and guilt over being a lying, cheating hypocrite.

Now it’s clear he agonized over this and, while we feel for him on a human level, we have to wonder when all these Bible-thumping conservatives will give up the charade that human morality can be dictated by fictitious deities. The hypocrisy is mind-boggling. Again and again we see guys like Senators Vitter and Ensign and now Sanford throw their piety in our faces only to be playing around behind their wives’ backs. This also brings up the larger legal issue of misleading your staff when you’re the governor not to mention what John McCain knew if and when he vetted Sanford for VP. Lots of questions need to be answered and we expect the media will be relentless in their pursuit.

Anyway, we hope Jesus and South Carolina are happy for ruining this man’s chance at happiness.

Want healthcare? Good luck. Want strong condemnation of Iran? Nope. How about movement on climate change? Or gay rights? Yeah right.

This headline and summary from the New York Times today sums it up:

”Obama Sought to Enlist a Wide Consensus on Finance Rules - The administration’s proposal to overhaul financial regulations, born of compromise, is not as bold as some had hoped.”

Not as bold as hoped. The nation’s banking system collapses and traders run amok and we get half-assed regulatory reform? What a joke.

Bill Maher ranted the other day on Real Time that Barack Obama had better start acting like George W. Bush, you know the guy that convinced Congress to invade Iraq, cut taxes and otherwise gutted the government often with Democratic assistance. Maher argued that Obama should basically “grow a pair” and start pushing around his weight. Instead we have a plate full of half-measures that accomplish little while Republican sharks circle in the water waiting for minor screw-ups they can escalate into media talking points.

Democrats need to take two lessons from Republicans if they expect to get their agenda through. Number 1, if you’re in charge, act like it. A guy is down? Kick him. If they won’t cooperate, ignore them and table their proposals. Number 2 is the New York State Senate. You can never count your opponents out and you should always act with urgency. A couple of elections go bad for the Dems in 2010 or 2012 and you have Republicans in charge. No change happens then.

So our message to Barack Obama is get with the program and stop being so damn timid. And to Democrats everywhere, keep pushing your Senators and President to act decisively.

A glimmer of hope appeared this week - a chance for Iran to shed the odious Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and turn over a more moderate, outward-looking leaf. Instead, a vigorous campaign where 85% of the population showed up to vote and one in which voting was extended several times turned out to be meaningless. No one outside of Iran and Hezbelloah thinks that 85% of the population showed up to vote for more of the same - this being the lunatic Ahmadinejad. Large turnouts never favor unpopular incumbents and reports of vote counts confirm it - in a country with largely paper ballots, millions of votes were reported nearly instantly. Guess they don’t need to count that paper after all.

It’s now certain Ahmadinejad was never going to lose this one and now the world is left with the consequences. The Iranian people clearly want change and they may actually have the means to force the country to heed their demands - someday - but right now the ruling mullahs clearly have no interest in such things as women’s rights, ending the nuclear program or stopping the sponsorship of terror groups.

This means that they may not be long for the world. Israel has been poised to strike for some time and now that that country is run by right-wing nutcase Benjamin Netanyahu, you can bet the gloves will soon come off over that nuclear program. After all, it was easy to hold off the Israelis if there was the possibility of some change. Now there is none and the Iranians will be more determined than ever to both clamp down on reformists thanks to ongoing protests and thumb their nose at the west. That can lead the Israelis to only one conclusion - to stop the Iranian nuclear program they’ll want to take out not only the facilities but quite possibly the leadership itself.

Can you imagine the chaos unleashed in the Middle East if this were to happen? Obviously Obama don’t wants this and he will have Mitchell, Clinton, et al involved but the Israelis may no longer feel they have a choice. Frankly, we’re not sure what the alternatives are - neither is good since either they get elections or Israel takes military action. End result is we get blamed for this and Iranians probably turn to support their leaders.

Right now normal Iranians are pretty pissed - assuming they know the election was stolen. What is the result? We don’t know for certain but chances are they will be quite ugly. 

The US is still responsible for about 42% of the world’s expenditures according to the annual report of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (as reported by AP). That represents $607 billion, a 9.7% increase over the prior year. China jumped into second place with a 10% increase to about $85 billion. France, England and Russia fill the next three spots - Russia jumping from 7th to 5th on the list.

As usual, the US is spending money it does not have - something that weakens us down the road since the money supply is not unlimited and we are heavily in debt. When the #2 country is spending only about 15% of what you are spending, there is also something completely out of whack. Time for America to get serious and cut its defense budget. Certainly raising it any further is unconscionable given our current financial challenges.

This week has been a good one for Poland - the 20th anniversary of elections that led to the fall of the Eastern Bloc and news that Poland has the strongest economy in the EU right now (1.9% GDP growth when the group is in recession.) So leave it to the Russians to try to revise history, by posting it on a website no less, that Poland should have acquiesced to the demands of Adolf Hitler to have their country dissected by Germany, who wanted to retake control of Gdansk (Danzig in German).

Of course, history has shown what appeasing Hitler resulted in. But that has not stopped the Russians from once again throwing their relations with Poland, and by extension the EU, into chaos. But for Russia, it seems history is something that needs to be revised to keep it in control of events, not to mention its neighboring countries. Regardless, the naive notion that playing nice with Hitler would have avoided World War II is about the dumbest thing we’ve heard in a while. The Poles have every right to be furious with Russia and once again the world has to wonder how far it can trust Vlad Putin and his lackey Dmitry Medvedev.

One word, scumbag speculators. Okay, that’s two words but these are the same people that drove everyone to $4+ gasoline last year, hastening our slide into the worst recession since the Depression. It’s time a stop was put to the speculation game - aka people forecasting the value of something based on predictions, minor news in the market (ooh our unemployment picture isn’t horrific just awful) and their own greed. There is no reason that oil should be $70 a barrel other than the fact that some guys want to make a shitload of money.

Now there are other factors - chief among them the U.S. dollar’s decade-long plummet into irrelevancy. That is in large part based on our crushing debt burden and inability to get our house in order, not to mention a government that spends like a bunch of drunken sailors. But when supply is high and demand not so much, prices should be lower. Right now, prices are going up. When we start to hit $3, $3.50 for a gallon of gas, what happens? People start making choices - do I buy this or fill up my car? Do I go out on Friday night or stay home? You wanna kill off the slight improvement in the economy, then bid up the price of oil.

Otherwise, we suggest someone get a grip on these speculators before they do real damage to the world’s economy.

The Berlin Zoo has 20 Humboldt penguins, 6 of whom are living an alternative lifestyle. For the past 30 days, one pair has been raising a penguin chick whose egg was abandoned by the real parents. So what do conservatives say now - not only is gay behavior exhibited in animals but so is the parenting gene. Again and again, heterosexuals of all species let their kids down. Thank goodness for that nice gay couple who happen to be a pair of penguins. Family values indeed!

Today Pawlenty was interviewed by Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC and sure sounded like he wants to be president in that coy way prospective candidates act when no one knows who they are. At the very end, Mitchell cornered him on the question of seating Franken and Pawlenty pledged to do what the State Supreme Court dictates. I guess Republicans feel the writing is on the wall with this election. So it seems it’s up to the Court to direct him to sign the election certificate, paving the way for Franken to be seated by the end of the month. If he refuses, at least now we have the videotape to use against him.

Critics have zeroed in on the fact that the Supreme Court reviewed five of her decisions and threw out three of them. But the larger picture shows that Judge Sotomayor actually has a perfectly good record of having rulings upheld. In fact, she has written 232 opinions in 11 years and only had 5 of those reviewed. Meanwhile, who had a 100% overturn rate at the Court? Current Supreme Court Justice Alito, that’s who. You never heard a peep about this because it’s a non-issue. The Court overturns about 75% of the cases it reviews - why would it take on a case without a high possibility of ruling that a previous judge was wrong? So the right-wing blowhards should shut the F up on this bogus argument.

There is a good analysis of Judge Sotomayor’s status as a judge on Law.com. 

Now we all know that having a gay person in your family will likely mean you will have a different viewpoint on the gay experience. It’s also likely you would have empathy for their plight in terms of marital inequality. And lo and behold, the odious Dick Cheney came out of the closet yesterday with this statement - “I think people ought to be free to enter into any kind of union they wish, any kind of arrangement they wish.” Guess having a gay daughter does make a difference.

Now if only President Obama would get off the fence and say something, anything to support gays - either by ending “don’t ask, don’t tell” or by allowing that they deserve to get married like the rest of us. Ball is in your court Mr. President.

Dr. Tiller was one of the few remaining physicians in the US who provided third-trimester abortions to pregnant women whose lives or health were at grave risk. In 1993, a would-be assassin shot him in both arms, but he recovered and bravely carried on, until today.

For much of the last four decades, Kansas has been the epicenter of the struggle for American women’s reproductive rights. In that struggle, Dr. Tiller was the object of abusive protests, official persecution, and lethal threats to himself and his family, culminating in today’s assassination. The purpose of these threats was to intimidate him and to discourage others from helping pregnant women carrying nonviable fetuses, women who would otherwise die or become crippled, infertile, or both. Why anyone would wish to deny these women treatment is just unfathomable.

With his death, it will be substantially more difficult for these women to find and receive the life-saving treatment they urgently need and richly deserve. Already, there are no facilities that legally provide abortion services in more than 90% of America’s counties. We are now tragically that much closer to the Talibanization of America.

Fight back. Express your outrage at this assassination to your representatives in Congress and your state legislature, and demand that medically necessary abortion services be widely and freely available as part of the upcoming healthcare reform.

Now we’ve seen the media do stupid things over the last few years but this inanity is just too offensive to let slide. Why in the world is CNN running a crawl with highlights of her judicial decisions completely out of context? Is our judicial system now to be reduced to neverending eight word sentences? What about the evidence in the case? The thought behind the decisions? Heck the precedents and the underlying law?

This kind of stupidity only demeans the system, not enhances it. That the morons at Time Warner (yes the same morons that merged with AOL and are now divesting it) continue to decimate news with their playing down to the masses is a national tragedy. Can someone please bring back Ted Turner? Please?

In the meantime, can someone put some news in the crawl? Thank you.

You’d think in this day and age that politicians would be a bit more sensitive to public opinion, but the Canadians consistently thumb their noses at opponents when it comes to viciously killing adorable seals. Today, however, took the cake. Governor General Michaelle Jean - the representative of the British monarch in Canada - gutted a seal and ate part of its heart. Yes, you read that right. It’s heart. That will make a fine campaign for supporters of a ban but it’s certainly not going to help that particular seal.

The EU recently voted to ban seal products and hunts except those for food for certain indigenous tribes. Unfortunately for the seals, Canada is not in the EU so the effect is more of a snub of Canada’s policy than anything else. After the heart being eaten, an EU representative had this to say, “No comment; it’s too bizarre to acknowledge,” so we’ll comment for them. This is a sick and barbaric process that is offensive to millions of people. And the Governor General - a silly position if there ever was one - a figurehead for a figurehead monarch - must have been out of her mind. We understand the need for indigenous people to survive but Canada’s hunt is far beyond that. And it’s time for the Canadians to show some humanity, even if it is just for seals.