Senate candidate Steve Stockman (R-Tea Party) threatens jail to anyone who publishes his mugshot. We published it here along with the whole bizarre story. Presumably we’ll soon be in the can.
More from longtime TPM Reader JB on what may be the weakness of Putin’s position …
Thanks for the Ukraine coverage. I think, after the shock of finding boots on the ground, we are now waking up to the weakness of the Russian position. Some other food for thought: Based on the 1994 Trilateral Statement by the Presidents of Ukraine, Russia, and the United States where Ukraine was to destroy all nuclear weapons on its territory, Ukraine, Washington and Moscow reached an agreement in January that allowed Kiev’s formal ratification of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
A contrary voice from TPM Reader IL …
Under what metric are Putin and Russia “#winning” with the invasion into Crimea? The Russian Central Bank just raised interest rates 150 bps in response to weakness in the Ruble. The Ruble is now the worst performing currency in the world this year.
It may be true that Russia is using 19th century statecraft. But this press photo from ITAR-TASS news service strongly suggests Russians are using 1970/80s phones and office technology.
Click post title to see larger version of photo.
We have a lot of economic indicators — but very few of them actually tell us if people are happy. We welcome Zachary Karabell this week for a TPM Cafe Book Club on The Leading Indicators: A Short History of the Numbers That Rule Our World. The week kicks off with his look at an attempt to measure happiness.
In case you missed, here’s my initial take on the crisis in Ukraine. It’s from the weekend but still captures my basic thoughts on the what it means, what we can do.
Juliet S. Sorensen points out that natural disasters can be breeding grounds for corruption: “each additional $100 per capita in FEMA relief was correlated with a 102 percent increase in corruption in a state.”
So who exactly was behind that spasm of “religious liberty”/”all good to hate on the gays” bill that suddenly cropped up all over the country? We got to the bottom of it.
Some sensible and sensibly restrained suggestions from three former Ambassadors to Ukraine (two Bush II, one Clinton) on how the Ukraine crisis might be walked back from the brink. A central point is that Ukraine not make the mistake Georgia did and be baited into shooting first.
As the Ukraine crisis has progressed I’ve gone back to the books to get as accurate a picture as I can of the territorial evolution of Ukraine over the last few centuries. We know that the country has a rough but persistent division between a more western-oriented and more thoroughly ethnic Ukrainian west and a more Russified east. At least some of that is due to the fact that significant parts of western Ukraine were ruled by Austria-Hungary and its successor states as recently as the first half of the 20th century.
This map doesn’t go back centuries. But it’s a helpful illustration of the territorial expansion of what is now Ukraine going back to World War I.
Click this post’s title to see a larger version of the map.