Soft power works

Sometimes.

From time to time I copy a post from my Kamaaina Loan blog here. Like now. And mainly just to needle the rightwing dimwits who were sure weak-kneed Obama was not warlike enough to earn respect in the rest of the world like, say, Dick Cheney.

Dick Cheney, who around the world doesn't respect him?

It seems pretty obvious from here that Obama's policy of using sanctions -- which never work, right? -- is working. Whether that is an unblemished good thing is an open question but it's a lot cheaper than starting wars and losing them. Now to copy myself:

When asked about the direction gold will take, Big Rich always says, “It will go up, or it will go down, or it will stay the same.” Seldom does it do both so enthusiastically during one 24-hour period than it did Monday and today, however. As Bloomberg News reports:

Gold rebounded from yesterday’s biggest drop this year as investors sought a haven amid turmoil in emerging market economies and falling commodities.
Russia’s ruble plunged to a record low after the country’s largest interest-rate increase in 16 years failed to revive confidence in the currency. The Turkish lira also tumbled to an all-time low.

Your Christmas (or Hanukkah) present is you don’t have many Turkish lira. Lucky you.
(Silver did not get the same kind of love. When nervous people with money look for comfort, they don’t look to silver — usually.)
The New York Times has much more about why gold did the big turnaround. It’s the ruble. It was less than 20 years ago that Russia defaulted, bringing down Long-term Capital Management and its two Nobel prize-winning advisers who didn’t understand that things can change on a dime — or 10 kopecks.
The economic news had another victim not mentioned in the news reports: Obama haters. Remember how they were sure that Obama’s “soft power” tactics were making the United States a pitiful has-been? Well, the five countries that are subject to US (and to some extent international) economic sanctions are all on the verge of economic collapse: Russia, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba.
It might not be a great idea to collapse countries with nuclear weapons, but the sanctions were meant to have an effect and they are having it.
As always, Kamaaina Loan is ready to buy or sell gold for you at whatever the day’s price is. We don’t care about the ruble.
#mauipawn #mauiretail

UPDATE Wednesday

For a moment there, I thought I had found a source ready to credit Obama's foreign policy for its success.  Matt O'Brian's lede was promising:

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

But then he went off to write about something else. That something is worth reading: Russia is caught in a classic liquidity trap.

Individuals, firms and even sectors can get caught that way, but when it happens to a whole national economy (at least under modern conditions), it is almost always the result of national government policy. The Republicans did it to America in the 1920s and again in the 2000s, and as we learned -- or, some of us, didn't learn -- both times, a deflationary spiral is almost impossible to deal with.

That's why you want to accept plenty of perhaps otherwise suboptimal conditions to avoid one.

UPDATE Friday

Paul Krugman has cogent comments (all from an interior Russian perspective, nothing about US policy), but being a city boy he leaves out Russia's intractable problem: food.

Putin, also a city boy, has done nothing about it and perhaps nothing can be done (although I think something could). The tsars couldn't do it, the peasants on their own couldn't and the Bolsheviks couldn't. All at least tried.

The USSR did not fall because Reagan scolded Gorbachev. It failed because it could never devise a workable agricultural policy. It increased grain production enormously -- faster even than its very rapidly growing population -- but it was very costly grain. Eventually, the uncovered costs emptied the Russian fisc.

To some extent Putin did the same with oil. Some years ago, it was freely predicted that Russian petroleum production was going to contract. It did not. But its costs were uneconomic compared with efficient producers.

Oil is a funny thing. For longish periods even inefficient producers can appear to be getting rich. But not indefinitely.

(In a peculiarly Russian wrinkle, too much of the grain was used to make vodka with terrible social consequences. Lucky for Russians, you cannot drink oil.)

A very, very bad week for gun nuts

It was a very, very bad week for America’s gun nuts. And since it was the anniversary of the Newtown slaughter of the innocents, decent Americans were often thinking about gun nuttery.

The gun nuts did not disappoint.

Working backward, I was having a late lunch in a redneck joint (pulled pork, cole slaw, dirty rice and a Diet Dr Pepper, can’t get more redneck than that) yesterday, and the teevee over my head was tuned, of course, to Fox. I couldn’t hear but the screen text read: Hostage Standoff Raises Questions about Australia’s Gun Laws.

Well, actually, no, among decent people the Sydney kidnapping did not raise any questions about Australia’s gun laws, which have resulted in 0 -- that’s zero, nil, nada, not any -- slaughters of innocent children since their passage about 15 years ago -- in response to Australia’s version of Newtown.

It will come as a surprise to no decent person that although three towns near Philadelphia were being searched for a gun nut who had slaughtered six members of his ex-wife’s family, Fox was NOT suggesting: Pennsylvania Manhunt Raises Questions about America’s Gun Laws.

You will not be surprised either to learn that the National Rifle Association had no comment on its website about Pennsylvania Manhunt, only an ad for it “exciting new brand,” NRA Tactical. I can imagine who is going to be excited about that:

Kory Watkins, leader of Open Carry Tarrant County, who this week called for overthrowing the gummint (this was his response to news that a member of his group had murdered her husband and his daughter):

“On Saturday the president of a Texas open-carry group called for like-minded followers to join him in marching on Washington to “arrest the bankers, crooked politicians and restore liberty here in our country” at gunpoint.
“Saying that voting ‘is not working,’ Kory Watkins, president of the Open Carry Tarrant County, wrote on his Facebook page: ‘Have you ever thought we might just need to organize a very large group of our own people. Like 200 from each state so we can march armed to DC take over the city, arrest the bankers, crooked politicians and restore liberty here in our country? I’m not scared. I mean really…..voting and waiting is not working!’ ”

Watkins is sorta famous for dragging his young daughter away from a Sonic because it was “not safe” because Kory Watkins was asked not to carry his semiautomatic penis substitute in.

Do any of the gun nuts who read RtO want to argue that Kory Watkins is the kind of centered, stable personality who should be allowed to go anywhere with his loaded gun? (There are gun nuts reading; you will meet one shortly.)

Well, if Kory Watkins is NOT a raving lunatic, then there should be no safer place in the country than a gun store in Tarrant County. Thus it is hard to explain this news from Ft. Worth:

“Fort Worth police are looking for the person who shot and killed a clerk at a gun store.
“Police say the man was shot multiple times Saturday evening at the Military Gun Supply store and was pronounced dead at the scene.
“Police are trying to identify a person of interest seen in video footage from the store.”

Whenever I call gun nuts gun nuts, one (or more) of them whine. They resent being classed with other crazy people. So let’s finish with a couple of examples (in addition to Kory Watkins) of ammosexuals being NOT CRAZY. First, G. Baker, writing a letter to the editor of the Houston Chronicle:

“Regarding ‘Want to know what grand jury will decide in Ferguson? Look to Harris County,’. . . the author is implying that a police officer should give thugs of this world th benefit of the doubt. Having police officers in my family, I can tell you that is not how I feel. The suspect doesn’t do exactly as you ask? Shoot.”

And then there is Colin, a reader of RtO, who is also sane and reasonable, as you will quickly see  from reading this paragraph from a longer e-mail:

“Oh and your rants about gun owners, come on. Your so tough the way you talk. I mean living on Maui is such a dangerous place and you do it with out a firearm, how do you manage? How do you think you would fare in Fergusson. They would eat you alive! You would wish you had a gun for protection, I wish you wouldnt so there would be one less of you to spew your word vommit. Hey do you know that more people are bludgeoned to death each year than shot with rifles? Do you know that your government just put out a report that they estimate that between 500,000 and 2,000,000 people have been saved by firearms?? NO you libtards dont want that fact known, it destrpys your narrative. Maybe before you go popping off in your little bubble you realize that their is a real world out there that people are trying to survive in and enjoy the security of having a firearm and that includes police, fire, doctors, lawyers, etc. No your just a big fat stupid libtard popping off his mouth on  a little tiny island of la la land!

“Hey Mele Kalikimaka and go Fuck yourself!!”

As Wayne Lapierre says, an armed society is a polite society.

Malaria is still the king of diseases

From The New York Times:

The World Health Organization reported steep declines in malaria cases and deaths compared with 2000 in a report released early Tuesday, saying the progress was particularly notable in Africa, where the disease is most prevalent. But the W.H.O. coupled the news on malaria with a warning that it could worsen again in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, the countries worst hit by the Ebola virus, which has overwhelmed their public health systems. In its World Malaria Report 2014, the W.H.O. said the malaria mortality rate fell by 47 percent worldwide and by 54 percent in the Africa region between 2000 and 2013. It attributed the improvement largely to advances in diagnostic tests as well as increases in the use of insecticide-treated bed nets and effective drug therapies. Malaria was responsible for about 584,000 deaths worldwide last year. While the scope of Ebola pales in comparison, it is far deadlier. In the W.H.O.’s latest Ebola update, on Monday, it reported 17,800 cases, including 6,331 deaths, since the outbreak began early this year.

Still 100 times more deadly than Ebola fever, even with the improvements. It is  noteworthy, also, that the new, lowered death count is higher than the lower bound of the generally accepted estimates of 500,000-1,000,000.

Most of the dead are babies and infants in areas without doctors, clinics or modern medicine. 

Open carry? Hell, yeah!

What could possibly go wrong?

Open Carry Tarrant County (that's Fort Worth) have recently been the poster children of Gun Nut Nation. Who can forget the self-shot video in which a leader of OCTC dragged his daughter away from a Sonic drive-in because (in his words) "it's not safe" because Sonic asked them not to bring their firearms? (I cannot find a link to the video because I am not going to waste a lot of time on them.)

You know where else is not safe? The homes of Open Carry Tarrant County members.

 The suspect has been involved in area open-carry activities and has this quotation on her Facebook page: “Sometimes removing some people out of your life makes room for better people.” Her profile photo shows her aiming a gun.

Plenty of room in  her life now that's she's blown away her husband and his daughter.

OCTC's Facebook page has nothing to say about it.

Numbers of people have already stated the obvious, so no  need for RtO this time: It takes only a moment for a good guy (gal in this case) with a gun to become a bad gal with a gun.

You can't make this stuff up. Well, you could, but your version would probably not be as rich in irony, stupidity and evil.

Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/crime/article4428614.html#storylink=cpy

Go ahead and cheat. It's legal

The 2nd United States Circuit Court of Appeals says so.  Nut graf:

“Although the government might like the law to be different, nothing in the law requires a symmetry of information in the nation’s securities markets,” the appellate court wrote, an apparent acknowledgement of the unfairness of trading stocks.

Remember when George Bush and the Republicans wanted to destroy Social Security and give all your pension money to those guys? Now you know why.

A humanitarian lesson

If you are not a subscriber to the New York Times and you've used up your free monthly views (Does the Times still have those? I am a subscriber, so I don't know), you should get one of the 99-cent teaser signups just to read this.

This is the funniest, saddest, weirdest news story of the year. Nut graf:

Cliff Sloan, the State Department envoy who negotiates detainee transfers, expressed gratitude to Mr. Mujica in a statement. Several other South American countries, including Brazil, Chile and Colombia, motivated by news of the Uruguay deal, had opened talks about potentially taking in some low-level detainees as well, but were watching would what happen.

“We are very grateful to Uruguay for this important humanitarian action, and to President Mujica for his strong leadership in providing a home for individuals who cannot return to their own countries,” Mr. Sloan said. “The support we are receiving from our friends and allies is critical to achieving our shared goal of closing Guantánamo.”

So Uruguay, which must be about 149th in the ISIL hit list, is sticking up its head to take some low-level jihadis (or not, who knows?) off our hands. I hope they don't get bombed for their trouble.

Next time some 100% 'Murrican yammers on about how we are the greatest, most helpful country that ever was, you might mention to her that Uruguay took in Guantanamo prisoners when the Congress (largely but not entirely the Republican part) is so terrified that it will not allow any of them to be brought into the United States in chains for trial.

This despite the fact that the several terrorism suspects who have been brought in for trial have successfully been tried. Leonie Brinkema, who presided over several of those trials, is a smallish, gray-haired woman, and she is not afraid to judge terror suspects. (I recall her saying as much at a judicial conference in Kaanapali, back in my reporting days; it seems a long time ago.)

But there is no more pitiful, quivering puddle of self-staining fear than an open-carrying, Second Amendment-lovin', kill-'em'-all-and-let-God-sort-them-out coward than a superpatriot.

FUN FACT: Can you name all the countries that the benevolent United States has not yet invaded?

NOT SO FUN ANSWER:    “Andorra, Bhutan and Liechtenstein – those are the only three of the United Nations-recognized 194 nations that the U.S. has not invaded,” says Christopher Kelly, co-author with British historian Stuart Laycock of “America Invades,” www.americainvades.com, a global tour of Americans’ military impact around the world.

(I cannot confirm that and suspect that they are using a broad definition of invade, but it's right to a first approximation.)

Recall that the landing on the moon, which some (but not RtO) have been celebrating the 50th anniversary of, was achieved only because America welcomed in hundreds of Nazi murderers (in Operation Paperclip).

The party of family values

Common scold

If the Republicans are the party of family values, as they claim, why do they not embrace the Obamas? There has not been a First Family that displayed the homelitic, Readers Digest and Norman Rockwell style of family attributes in the White House since . . .  well, since ever.

To outward appearances, Mr. and Mrs. Obama are deeply in love, and also a matched team in furthering his career. The daughters, Malia and Sasha, seem to be polite, good students, warmly attached to mom and dad. Possibly Malia, who is around 13, throws tantrums over wanting to go steady and screams at Michelle, “You never loved me!” in the privacy of the family quarters, but it seems unlikely.

We may contrast this almost-too-perfect script from a Frank Capra movie with the train wrecks of domesticity the GOP has served up over the years. While I heard of no blemishes on the family image of the Romneys (aside from the dubious business morality of the pater familias), take the Palins, puh-leeze: Nobody but nobody ever worked the family values-scam harder than the floozy Sarah Palin with her floozy daughter, drunken son and all-round battlin’, griftin‘ mob of sanctimonious phonies.

Then there was horndog McCain, nobody’s model of marital fidelity. And before that the Bush IIs, with their drunken lout of a father who could not hold a job and their out-of-control drunken daughters.

The Bush Is were scandal-free but not very close. When Bush I needed a family portrait for political purposes, he could not get his children to gather for the photographer, so he created a clumsy forgery.

And who can forget the Reagans, paragons of all old-fashioned virtues, except for Ron Jr. working out his daddy issues on the teevee and Patti working out her daddy issues by taking off all her clothes and making soft porn films.I do not usually pay attention to the domestic affairs of political leaders. It does not have to affect their ability to operate -- FDR’s sham marriage and the misadventures of his sons did not prevent him from being the most effective president of the 20th century. (With Nixon, the dynamic apparently ran in the other direction; his political life made his wife’s life miserable. One wonders whether a loving and supportive wife would have buffed out some of the vindictive hatefulness in the man, but probably it wouldn’t have. Sociopaths are resistant to love.) But an otherwise trivial event blew up over the last week that really makes the question -- why don’t the Republicans admire the fine family values of the Obamas? -- insistent.

Dressed for church

A minor league, but entirely typical, Republican operative, Elizabeth Lauten, launched a weird attack on the behavior and appearance of Sasha and Malia at the pardoning of the turkeys. Lauten probably didn’t have that many readers but the Internet is a multiplier.

And her remarks were truly weird. She criticized the girls for dressing like they were going to a bar. In fact, as anyone can see, they were dressed either for church or the mall. Or maybe school. You might imagine that Lauten hasn’t ever been to a bar, but as we will see, that is not so.

More subjective was her rant that the girls seemed bored and showed a lack of respect. Lack of respect for a turkey pardoning? Say it ain’t so!

I watched the entire 5-minute film of the event on Post TV and while it did not show any eyerolling, the camera wasn’t on the girls most of the time. I have no trouble imagining that two girls, 13 and 16, rolled their eyes at some of the president’s corny jokes. “Come on, Dad!”

Or that they were bored. So what?

Lauten later removed her post but the Internet never forgets.

Subsequent to her apology and resignation, she scrubbed her FB page, but the Internet is not only retentive but cruel.

It turns out that when Elizabeth Lauten was Sasha’s age she was robbing Belk’s although unlike Mike Brown, she was not shot to death for it. And she does know what the inside of a bar looks like. Her own Twitter feed had a picture of her blowing a longneck.

Stay classy, Elizabeth.

It will come as no surprise that the Republicans, instead of trying to put Elizabeth Lauten as far behind them as possible, could not refrain from complaining that Democrats did worse, although they could not show any instance of it.

So, back to the original question: Why doesn’t the party of family values embrace the wonderful family values of the Obamas?

I can think of only one possible reason: the Obamas are black.