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Not the Best Image Management Ever

March 3rd, 2014

Throughout the Olympics, the Russians were rather insistent that their image was being unfairly sullied by the foreign media. It didn’t help much that one Russian representative said he had proof that it was the media’s fault in the form of surveillance cameras in the hotel bedrooms.

But, determined to show exactly how warm and fuzzy they are, just days after closing out the Olympics, Russia invades Ukraine in the Crimea, ironically just a few hundred miles west of Sochi. After a corrupt pro-Russian leader is literally run out of the country by his own people, who were furious that their hopes to create closer ties with Europe were being sabotaged.

So, members of the Olympic Committee: are you still satisfied with your choice?

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  1. Troy
    March 5th, 2014 at 06:27 | #1
    Reply | Quote

    five years ago:

    http://blogd.com/wp/index.php/archives/5366

    Once again, I’m not sure Obama’s proposals will work–some will surely be more successful than others, there’s a good chance that rather than being too bold, he isn’t being bold enough–but I am absolutely certain where the continuation, or augmentation, of Reagan-Bush policies would leave us: even worse off than we are now.

    ten years ago:

    http://blogd.com/wp/index.php/archives/487

    OK, so he was handed a bad economy (after the biggest economic boom in history, led by Clinton)–it’s his job to fix it, and he failed to do so. His fix-all cure was to slash taxes for the rich while giving a modicum to the middle class, and then wait for a recovery so he could claim credit. The promised jobs and overall recovery as well have not come, but Bush is pretending like the dickens like it has.

    The Clinton boom had in it the seeds of bust. The stock market got really, really overpriced:

    http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=sHN

    and the resulting crash really hurt a lot of people.

    The 1990s started the credit bubble influx:

    http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=sHQ

    YOY growth in consumer credit / total wages

    Gini started going off-scale:

    http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/GINIALLRH

    and the increasing trade deficit:

    http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/NETEXP

    muted manufacturing job growth:

    http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/MANEMP

    The Bush Administration’s fix was to boost gov’t spending ~40%:

    http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=sHS

    almost doubling the defense budget:

    http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/FDEFX

    while standing aside as the mortgage fraud bubble flooded the economy with $6T of new consumer debt:

    http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/CMDEBT

    which did give us a booming economy 2005-2007 until all the suicide lending started defaulting (as they were designed to do).

    Obama never had that progressive a Congress (thanks to the near-DINOs in the Senate, and Pelosi is/was no great leftist either for that matter) 2009-2010, and of course 2011-now has been a policy blackout at best.

    The good news is I’m pretty certain now I’ll be joining you in Japan next year. Had enough of this place, going to jump back from the frying pan into the fire, like I did in 1992.

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