I’m hearing “Obama couldn’t have fixed the economy.  Wage stagnation is not his fault, it’s been going on for decades!”  (For the record it’s been going on for at least 34 years, probably 39, and for some parts of the population, for 46 (that’s when wages for working class white males peaked.  Which is why they’re pissy.))

The Stimulus: Negotiating 101, people, is that you always ask for more than you want.  Obama asked for too little, and a huge part of his stimulus was tax cuts. Worse than this, his stimulus was structured terribly.  What you do with a stimulus package in a recession and financial collapse is you use it to restructure the economy.

Prosecute the Bankers: This is an executive decision.  Entirely an executive decision.  There was widespread fraud, and no senior executive on Wall Street could credibly claim to not know of it.

The Republican victory in the 2014 midterms is less than 24 hours old. But already, the hawkish wing of the GOP is planning an ambitious battle plan to revamp American foreign policy: everything from arming Ukraine’s military to reviewing the ISIS war to investigating the U.S. intelligence community’s role in warming relations with Iran.

By Sarah Cascone, Artnet.com, Nov. 4, 2014

For the second time in less than a month, a Russian art exhibit lionizing president Vladimir Putin is making headlines (see: "New Art Exhibition Recasts Vladimir Putin as Hercules"). "No Filters," organized by Young Guard of United Russia (the youth wing of Putin's political party) at the Bottle design factory in Moscow, shows Putin in a variety of of flattering caricatures: a caped superhero, a boxer in the ring, driving a tank, and, in a large piece titled Targeted Sanctions, spanking president Barack Obama like a naughty schoolboy [....]

"There are elections when you choose between A and B, and then there are the more difficult ones when you choose between A and A...You are a liberal, so you do not understand this. In the Russian consciousness, you can choose between A and A and A, and choosing between an infinite number of A’s is true freedom."

-- Aleksandr A. Prokhanov, editor in chief of the Russian nationalist newspaper Zavtra, on the separatist elections in Donetsk

This is a really good look at why polls under count Democratic votes. 

In 2010, the polls underestimated the Democrats in every competitive Senate race by an average of 3.1 percentage points, based on data from The Huffington Post’s Pollster model. In 2012, pre-election polls underestimated President Obama in nine of the 10 battleground states by an average of 2 percentage points.

“The problems that we’re having with getting representative samples tend to lead us toward people who tend not to be Democrats,” said Scott Keeter, the director of survey research at the Pew Research Center. 

The police response can only be described as hysterical. ... One could speak of many things here: the obvious embarrassment of the police, compared with the perseverance and cheerful good humour of the occupiers, who continually grew in numbers and spirit as the repression increased. But what I really want to talk about is the reaction of the media.

By Elizabeth Rosenthal, New York Times, Oct.25, 2014

[....] “How could it be that the doctor was in network and the hospital was in network, but I had to pay separately for the room?” Mr. Boudreau said [....] On maternity wards, new mothers pay for a lactation consultant. An emergency room charges an “activation fee” in addition to its facility charges. Psychologists who have agreed to an insurer’s negotiated rate for neuropsychological testing bill patients an additional $2,000 for an “administration charge.” [....]

By Shaun Walker in Moscow, The Guardian, Oct. 24, 2014

Vladimir Putin used a meeting with foreign journalists and Russia experts to rail against the United States and the current world order, blaming Washington for many current global problems, including unrest in Ukraine and Islamic terrorism.

Putin said that over the past two decades, the US had behaved as if it were someone “nouveau riche who had suddenly received a lot of wealth – in this case, global leadership”. Instead of using its powers wisely, said Putin, the US had created a unilateral and unfair system [....]

This is something I have noticed here in Florida. I also think Fox News is losing it's viewers for the same reason. 

Midterm elections are all about turning out base constituencies. Over the last few decades, there have been few more reliable voters for Republicans than white evangelical Protestants. This year, however, GOP candidates may be getting less help from this group—not because white evangelical Protestants are becoming less supportive or less motivated, but simply because they are declining as a proportion of the population, even in Southern states.

A look at generational differences demonstrates that this is only the beginnings of a major shift away from a robust white evangelical presence and influence in the country. While white evangelical Protestants constitute roughly three in 10 (29 percent) seniors (age 65 and older), they account for only one in 10 (10 percent) members of the Millennial generation (age 18-29). In the last few national elections, however, because of high levels of voter turnout, white evangelical Protestants have managed to maintain an outsized presence at the ballot box according to national exit polls, representing roughly one-quarter of voters.

But the fact that there are currently five Southern states—Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, and North Carolina— where polling shows that the Senate race margins are less than five percentage points indicates that 2014 may be the year that the underlying demographic trends finally exert enough force to make themselves felt.

Bloomberg News, Oct. 22, 2014

[....] “Canada will never be intimidated,” and will redouble efforts to combat terrorism, Harper said in a televised address to the nation last night [....]

So shocking were the day’s events to the Canadian psyche that organizers canceled a National Hockey League game between the Ottawa Senators and the Toronto Maple Leafs.

The parliamentary incursion set off a rolling shootout with security and police that started in parliament’s foyer and ended with a gunman, wearing a blue and white headscarf, lying dead near the parliament library entrance. A mobile phone video captured the chaos as authorities, guns drawn, moved in on one of the invaders and opened fire, more than a dozen shots reverberating loudly in the stately arches of the building. [....]

This has been the focus of Europe the last few days of a mysterious "whisky" in Sweden's waters.  The Russians deny that the sub is theirs. 

6.16 Just when the whole affair couldn't get any more 007, a rumour is now being circulated that the Russians were testing out a prototype mini-submarine known as the Triton NN.

Not much is known about it, but according to the website of the NIzhny Novogorod Lazurit design bureau, which claims to have designed it, a prototype underwent government testing in 2008. It is meant to combine the qualities of a speed boat and a submersile and may have been issued to navy special forces in Kaliningrad.

  The article has a picture of the new Russian sub.