Looks like the border between Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Georgia is getting a little tense.

Russian troops allegedly moved the border markers 500 meters before moving them back (Radio Free Europe), and Georgia allegedly shelled a South Ossetian village (Russia Today). Meanwhile, Moscow is warning Georgia not to use force, while Saakashvili is saying he’s not going to (Xinhua).

Actually, looking through Google News it’s kind of interesting seeing which sources are supporting Georgia and which aren’t: you’ll notice that the overwhelming majority of the sources in the Russian media are taking the government’s position (which isn’t particularly odd, given that the overwhelming majority of Russian media outlets are, in one way or another, government-owned–Izvestia was the last independent national newspaper when it got bought in 2006, I think), while sources like Xinhua and Al Jazeera are writing from a more Georgia-centric perspective. Interesting times in the Caucauses.

I’ll try to translate one of the inevitable Izvestia articles on this topic after work today (although it’s still state-owned, it’s usually a little more critical than the other sources).

See the not-fawning NYT article (crazy, isn’t it?).

Notice this part.

He revved the car, and within seconds, the solution hardened, the engine seized up and was kaput.

Wreckers were called to pick up the car, remove the spoiled engine and crush the car. They have to certify that the cars have been crushed and rendered inoperable before the government will process reimbursement claims.

This is infuriating to someone like me. My family has a history of buying older cars (a succession of 80s-vintage Mercedes (mostly) diesels, and recently a pair of 90s BMW 3-series) and maintaining them ourselves. One of our parts sources (and definitely the cheapest) is pick-and-pull junkyards, where rows upon rows of unusable cars sit, waiting for people to strip the things they need. I haven’t ever seen one that wasn’t busy.

Now, none of the cars we own qualify for the Cash for Clunkers thing, but some of the 220,000 (~ 1 billion / 4500) cars disabled and crushed were certainly built on the same chassis, and really the only wasted parts for us would’ve been the engines (and even there, there’s some commonality between a 1993 BMW 328i and a 1997 BMW 318i, for instance).

So. Cash for Clunkers’ impact on us (not just my family, but anyone who owns older cars!) was to: 1) make it more difficult and more expensive to maintain our 30mpg BMW and our 26mpg Mercedes station wagon (one of the very few sedan-based cars that can actually fit six people and stuff, even though it’s not in use right now) and 2) possibly force us into buying a newer car sooner than we’d like (one which would be vastly less suitable for our family). We could spend a few hundred dollars on a heater core from the dealer, but we also could’ve gotten it for $50, with a spare hubcap and some trim pieces, from the junkyard, and too much of that adds up.

Forced change!

Didn’t see a post about it yet.

Former president Zelaya was denied permission to land in Honduras earlier today.

Zelaya told the Venezuela-based news network Telesur that his jet was denied permission to land in Tegucigalpa, where military vehicles were arrayed on the runway. The aircraft was en route to San Salvador, the capital of neighboring El Salvador, after what Zelaya called a “fruitless” attempt to land.

At least one person was killed and eight wounded after security forces opened fire and used tear gas on protesters who ringed Tegucigalpa’s airport, said Hugo Orellana, a Red Cross director in Honduras. Protest leaders put the death toll at three.

After being denied permission to land in Honduras, Zelaya’s plane made a stop to refuel in Nicaragua’s capital, Managua.

During the stop, he met with Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega — who is a leftist ally of both Zelaya and Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez — and told Telesur that his supporters had been trying to remove obstacles from the runway in Tegucigalpa when troops opened fire. “The people pulled back when fired upon,” he said.

Other highlights: the US and World Bank still have not restored aid. Leftist organizations such as the UN and the OAS remain opposed to the rule of law in Honduras. The EU has withdrawn its ambassadors (as a bloc, I guess?). Obama still thinks Zelaya should be restored. CNN is taking the party line with respect to how to present it (lumped in with all the illegal coups in Latin America’s past, Zelaya as the more legitimate president).

Nothing new, basically, except Honduras continues to stand firm for freedom. Stay with it, guys–some of us care.

I spent the week volunteering at a church camp in addition to the usual 8 hours a day of work. I didn’t feel like doing the news in the two hours I had between getting home and going to bed.

Worry not! I shall return next week.

Why I’m doing these.

Two articles this week. I’ve settled down on three a week as a reasonable schedule, translating one on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday; you’re getting an early update this week because I have a family reunion this weekend.

Read More →

I don’t have much to say about this one, beyond that it sure is nice to see that there’s a media somewhere that has Obama’s number, even if it is a state-owned Russian newspaper.

Why I’m doing this (and that means that if any of you are Russian speakers, I welcome corrections!). Only one story this week. I was going to do a second, but I forgot to save it before turning my computer off, and it was only about Hillary Clinton breaking her elbow. This one’s much better.

Original.

Barack Obama (on?) the American central bank (June 19th)

Any financial transactions - whether by banks or corporations - must be rigidly monitored. For this reason, a Special Council for Supervision of Financial Markets will be created in the United States, and the powers of the Federal Reserve will be increased. This is his policy on statement on reform of financial regulations, said president of the United States Barak Obama. In his view, owing to these changes authorities will act together to prevent the formation of bubbles.

“The culture of irresponisibility has deep roots from Wall Street to the rest of America,” the president of the United States forcefully stated. “The current model of financial market regulartion was designed in the wake of the great financial crisis of the 20th century, the Great Depression. They could not withstand the economy of the 21st century, with its speed, size, and sophistication.”

The main idea of Obama’s reforms is that regulations must monitor systemic risks and hold large companies under control, who otherwise might undermine the stability of the financial system and economy.

For that reason the Federal Treasury will create a Council for the Supervision of Financial Service, which will include the Secretary of the Treasury, the Chairmen of the Federal Reserve Board, the FDIC, and the SEC. The council will be able to request information from any financial company.

This greatly increases the powers of the Fed. Under Obama’s plan, it will not only oversee banks, but any companies which  are engaged in various degrees of financial transactions. These companies must provide, at the Federal Reserve’s request, any information about its activities and those of its subsidiaries in the United States and abroad.

Now, the Federal Reserve regulates commercial banks, registered under federal laws, but other banks and savings institutions are regulated by the state, which allows them to choose convenient locations. Also, the administration wishes* to increase the banks’ reserve requirements and limit their ability to take on risks.

Obama’s speech aroused great interest [literally, 'caused great resonance'--I like that turn of phrase] in financial circles. Most commentators are confident that many of the points in Obama’s plan will reduce the profits of financial institutions. In principle, this is logical - a race for greater profits eventually led to a crisis. But will it rectify the situation as the president of the United States suggested [iffy on that sentence]. Well-known financier George Soros tried to answer that question in an article he wrote. He believes that the market is not perfect, and in the state mechanisms of regulation. [There's more on the end of this sentence, but I'm not sure what it means.]

To some degree, one can agree with Soros. However, I would like to ask a question of the American authorities: who is fit to judge (in the sense of regulators)? The Federal Reserve, which is actively inflating bubbles, buying treasury bonds, and paying for these transactions with unsecured dollars? [Again, not sure about the preceding sentence; this article seems to have increased in difficulty.] This program, by the way, will cost $300 billion.

This is very similar to the situation where one sees the mote in his friend’s eye, but doesn’t notice the beam in his own. Therefore I would like to suggest that the American administration begin reform of regulatory reform regulators.

A Fishbreath Weekly Feature.

As some of my earlier posts indicate, I’m studying (among other things) the Russian language as one of my majors. Since it’s summer, and I’m here working a desk job to keep the money flowing in that I may continue to engage in said studies, I haven’t been spending too much time keeping up on my Russian grammar. A few nights ago it hit me that there’s an easy way to do so, while also providing some interesting reading for you folks–translating articles from the online Russian press.

There are two major, easily available sources: Pravda.ru and Izvestia. I’m not going to bother with Pravda.ru (the online version is entirely unaffiliated with the print Pravda, although they grew from the same organization) for the moment, since it is, in general tone (sensationalist, nationalistic, biased), a Russian version of Al Jazeera. For that reason I’ll be pulling the articles almost exclusively from Izvestia, which is at least somewhat more reputable as a legitimate news source, with an eye toward articles about the US, Obama, and other topics of interest to the community here.

Expect the first one tomorrow. I doubt if I’ll do more than one a week the first few times, but since the idea is to improve my Russian skills, hopefully I’ll be able to handle more before too long.

Do zavtra.

This post by Moe got me thinking (particularly the part about DVD sales).

Compare: Obama, Bush, Clinton in the Movies/TV category. The dearth of items for Clinton is understandable; the day of mass-distribution DVDs had not yet arrived.

The contrast between Obama and Bush is much more relevant, and that makes it much more shocking. There are dozens of documentaries about Obama’s primary run and campaign, and on the front page of the Obama search I count twice as many DVDs of Obama’s inauguration as a search for “George W. Bush Inauguration” turns up.

So, yeah. As if you weren’t already aware, the media’s in the tank.

George Tiller’s murder happened Sunday morning. On Monday morning at 10:30, two soldiers were shot (with one dead) outside a recruiting center in Arkansas by a man who’d converted to Islam while serving a prison sentence

As of now, 9:30am on Tuesday morning, 48ish hours have elapsed since Tiller’s death, and 23 since the shootings in Arkansas.

On Google News in the past month:
George Tiller: 7882 results, with ~5800 articles in the ‘all news articles’ links.

Recruiter shooting: 421 results, with ~800 articles in the ‘all news articles’ links (there was a link to ~5600 of the Tiller articles as well, due to some coverage of both events in the same article).

Divide Tiller’s results by two to get 3900/2900, and compare to 421/800. Tiller’s death is getting about three times as much media play as the killing in Arkansas. Why? Is the killing of a soldier by a Muslim extremist any less of a story than the killing of an abortionist by a pro-life extremist? The media would have you think so.

This one. I’m sure some of you have looked at it and seen this already, but I haven’t seen it said in as many words. The pattern is, in the long run, politically expedient for Democrats.

Picture this: Obama narrowly wins the election in 2012 on good speechwriting, quality teleprompter operation, and force of personality, and by claiming to have cut the deficit by a bunch during his first term (the fact that it’s his deficit to begin with notwithstanding). Republicans make big gains in Congress, though, in 2010 and 2012. In Obama’s second term, deficits slowly creep back up. The media harps on the growing deficit as being the fault of the Republican majority in Congress, and the Democrats cruise to an easy win in 2016.

It could happen, and it makes sense to me.