"The United States will stand with the international community in affirming that there will be costs for any military intervention in Ukraine," President Barack Hussein Obama said in a brief statement from the White House after Russia invaded the Crimea Feb. 28. Then he left for the Washington Hilton to declare the bar open at a function for the Democrat National Committee.  When intelligence officials came to the White House the next day to brief, the president didn't attend. "Rarely has a threat from a U.S. president been dismissed as quickly - and comprehensively - as Obama's warning Friday night," noted Washington Post reporter Scott Wilson. The seizure of the Crimea "is really 19th Century behavior in the 21st Century," said Secretary of State John Kerry.  Mr. Putin, alas, "has not received the memo on 21st-century behavior," said the Washington Post.

If a politician or government official takes a direct monetary bribe for granting a favor or sweetheart contract, do you think he should be sent to prison? Such an illegal activity is despicable, but it is usually far less costly to society than the legal forms of corruption, which undermine the integrity and respect for government that is necessary for a civil and prosperous society. Most legal corruption is all about increasing power for those in government. This past Friday (2/28), the following amendment offered by Sen. Ted Cruz, Texas Republican, was defeated in the Senate Judiciary Committee.  It was to prevent "Intentional discrimination by employee of the Internal Revenue Service." It is hard to imagine anyone interested in good government being against such an amendment, because it is clearly designed to help prevent those in the IRS from abusing their power -- which many have done. Yet 10 senators, all Democrats, voted against it. They were:

Each day brings new reports of seriously ill patients losing their doctors; financially struggling families socked with huge health insurance premium increases; workers who've had their hours cut back or lost jobs because of Obamacare. Twenty nine percent of respondents in a Kaiser health tracking poll Feb. 26 say they've been hurt by Obamacare; 17 percent say they've benefited from it. The number negatively affected is sure to rise, while new problems are sure to keep cropping up. The federal government has spent $1.2 billion to subsidize troubled state health care exchanges.  But heartbreaking stories like these examples below make the mammoth waste of taxpayers' money almost not worth mentioning.  Any advocate of Obamacare should now be seen as criminally immoral.

For the time being, the good guys have won in Ukraine, no thanks to the pusillanimous wimps in Washington and the European Union. "The seismic shift in Ukraine was achieved by its people, not outside forces, and not its politicians," said Andrew Wood. It may not last long. Russia is conducting "military maneuvers" near the Crimea in southeastern Ukraine, where Russia has an important naval base. Armed men seized the regional parliament building in the Crimea, and the regional airport. "The eruption in Kiev could set off a tsunami that will engulf us all," warned British historian Mark Almond.  * * * * As gutsy and determined as the protestors in Kiev - but recipients of far less attention - are the protestors in Venezuela.  Anti-government demonstrations have grown since the arrest of opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez Feb. 18. A gun-toting ex-general has become a hero to the protest movement.  * * * * This time of rising international tensions is a good time to gut the U.S. military, the Obama administration thinks.  * * * * It was, said Marc Caputo of the Miami Herald, the best speech of Marco Rubio's career.  Former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan is impressed he gave it with so little preparation: * * * * Obamacare is certain now to fall far short of the administration's original goal of 7 million signups by the March 31 deadline, so HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is trying to more the goalposts. She should try telling the truth for a change, recommends Charles Krauthammer.  "It's easier to memorize." * * * * All the Obamacare horror stories are untrue, Dingy Harry Reid said in a speech on the Senate floor Wednesday.  "I wonder if Reid calling millions of Americans liars will show up in any ads," said Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin.  I'd bet on it.

Leaders of other countries don't respect President Barack Obama, say 53 percent of respondents in Gallup's annual World Affairs poll, conducted Feb. 3-6. That only 53 percent of Americans think this is a clear indictment of the news media's coverage of foreign affairs. He would lead the world by "deed and example," not try to "bully it into submission," Sen. Obama wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine in 2007. In a major foreign policy speech in 2008, Mr. Obama said he would focus on: "ending the war in Iraq responsibly; finishing the fight against al-Qaida and the Taliban; securing all nuclear weapons and materials from terrorists and rogue states; achieving true energy security; and rebuilding our alliances to meet the challenges of the 21st century." No president has talked the talk so well, or walked the walk so badly.  Here's a compendium of just how badly.

As America suffers through a brutal winter as well as a political/economic winter with Curse of Zero, let's step back and take a longer look at the historical era we are enduring. His research from 1789 on indicates capitalist economies go through a cycle of boom and bust roughly every 50 to 60 years, Russian economist Nikolai Kondratieff wrote in 1925.  The "Kondratieff Wave," K-Wave, for short, was given its name by Joseph Schumpeter, arguably the greatest economist of the 20th Century, who based his work on business cycles on it. Kondratieff offered no opinion about why the long waves he'd identified existed, but said they are "a very important and essential factor in economic development, a factor the effects of which can be found in all the principal fields of social and economic life." The "seasons" within a K-Wave each last for roughly the same amount of time, but the length and strength of each vary somewhat, depending on how people behave. The last Kondratieff "Spring" began around 1950.  "Winter" started around 2000.  Earlier K-Wave "Winters" (since 1789) have lasted from 9 to 20 years.  The last three have averaged 16 years.  They always end in depression.  Buckle your seatbelts.  Hard times - really hard times - are fast approaching. Yet...

It's all about winning and losing, but the best man doesn't always win, and outcomes frequently have more to do with luck than with merit.  Brilliant strategies fail, and fools stumble into glorious victories.  Napoleon preferred a lucky general to a brilliant one. Which brings us to today.  The headlines are grim, the pictures from Syria, Venezuela and Ukraine are blood-chilling, executions and demonstrations are mounting in Iran, and Obama doesn't know what to do about anything.  So he doesn't do anything; he and his strategists just dither.  And yet... And yet, our enemies may be on the verge of losing.  Big time. The global anti-freedom alliance consists primarily of jihadis and radical leftists, the two principal forces committed to the destruction of what is sometimes known as the Western world. That alliance is cracking, because many millions of people are fighting the anti-Western tyrants.  Here's the scorecard.

Few express opinions different from what they are paid to say, and such is equally true for those who work for government. On an almost daily basis, the world is treated to presidential spokespeople denying what most people understand to be true. Last week, Jason Furman, President Obama's chief economic adviser, who used to have a reputation as a competent economist, embarrassed himself by trying to deny - in response to a Congressional Budget Office report - that the president's proposal to increase the minimum wage would cost jobs. All too many professionals are willing to ignore empirical evidence when it conflicts with their beliefs or those of their employers. Perhaps in no place do we see greater evidence of this than in the field of climate science. If the climate scientists who produced their grossly defective, predictive models had been employed by private companies that depended on the accuracy of their predictions, they would have been fired. Private economic forecasters who are consistently wrong tend to lose their credibility and at least some of their income.  There is one group of economic forecasters, though, who suffer very little loss of prestige or income, even though they may often be wrong. They are those who work for the Federal Reserve and other government agencies.