Russian Spy Suspect Jumps Bail?

From the "No shit, Sherlock!" desk:

What happens when you allow a suspected Russian Spy to post bail?

See: From Russia With Gripes

All but one of the 11 members of the alleged ring remain in federal custody. One suspect apparently jumped bail Wednesday. Christopher Metsos, who the Federal Bureau of Investigation said shuttled between Moscow and the U.S. to coordinate the spy network, had been arrested Tuesday in Cyprus while preparing to board a flight to Budapest, Hungary. He posted bail as the U.S. sought extradition on charges of conspiracy to conduct espionage and money laundering

Did someone seriously expect a different result?

See also: Christopher Metsos, 11th Russian Spy Suspect, Skips Bail

Justice Minister Loucas Louca admitted that a judge's decision to release Christopher Robert Metsos "may have been mistaken" but said authorities were examining leads on his possible whereabouts.

"May have been mistaken." Ya think?

Off course the loons of the grass-roots left at Democratic Underground think the whole thing is a hoax.

See: Russian Spy case is a US fucking hoax.

This girl sounds like many other intelligent Russians that come to work in the U.S. This whole case falls more in line with Bush plants in the FBI creating a controversy to make Obama look foolish after his meetings with Medvedev. As Sergei Lavarov said already the timing is very suspect.

I think the DU guy is serious. I think he really believes that.

[Highlighting in the quotes is mine. - Syrah.]

The BP Gulf Oil Spill, Regulatory Capture and Government Failure

As the BP Gulf Oil Spill crisis drags on, the calls and screams to have people criminally prosecuted will become ever more shrill and demanding.

Who and what is ultimately to blame?

Looking at BP's role and lobbying efforts in American politics reveals something very interesting about the nature of political systems and the human condition.

See: Feel the Rage

The liberals' fury at the President is almost as astounding as their outrage over the discovery that oil companies and their regulators might have grown too cozy. In economic literature, this behavior is known as "regulatory capture," and the current political irony is that this is a long-time conservative critique of the regulatory state.

The Nobel economist George Stigler of the University of Chicago was one of the concept's main developers, and it is a seminal plank of the "public choice" school of economics for which James Buchanan won the economics Nobel in 1986. Ronald Reagan warned about this in different words in one of his farewell speeches.

In the better economic textbooks, regulatory capture is described as a "government failure," as opposed to a market failure. It refers to the fact that individuals or companies with the highest interest or stake in a policy outcome will be able to focus their energies on politicians and bureaucracies to get the outcome they prefer.

See: Once a government pet, BP now a capitalist tool

While BP has resisted some government interventions, it has lobbied for tax hikes, greenhouse gas restraints, the stimulus bill, the Wall Street bailout, and subsidies for oil pipelines, solar panels, natural gas and biofuels.

Now that BP’s oil rig has caused the biggest environmental disaster in American history, the Left is pulling the same bogus trick it did with Enron and AIG: Whenever a company earns universal ire, declare it the poster boy for the free market.

Making government more powerful, makes it more corruptible.

Government is corruptible because people are corruptible. There is no getting around or away from that fact.

As government grows and is given more control over the details and minutia of our daily lives, the scope of corruptibility of the government grows with it.

When the government makes a law, a rule or a regulation regarding a behavior, it affects peoples lives. Laws, rules and regulations are created with the specific intent of affecting peoples lives. Since laws, rules and regulations affect peoples lives, they create an incentive for those most affected to be able to influence those that are making the laws, rules and regulations.

There is a give an take to this. Everyone has things that they want. Everything becomes negotiable. Anything can be bought if the price is right and a seller has something that a buyer wants.

The process that this all gets worked out in, where the negotiations are made, the horse trading is done and back room deals are dealt, we call politics.

People's property and lives are at stake. The costs and prices become greater as the scope and power of the laws, rules and regulations increase.

The end results can be disturbing and very predictable.

How is that "Hope and Change" working for you?

It seems it ain't working so well for Obama's "progressive" supporters.

See: Progressives Ask: Is It Obama, Or Is It Us?

Left-wing activists described the year leading up to Barack Obama's election as exhilarating, empowering and exciting.
Now, if you ask progressives gathered for the America's Future Now conference in Washington, D.C., about the first year and a half of his presidency, they say:

"Frustrating."

"Sobering."

"Brutal."

At least, those were the reactions of, respectively, union activist Nick Weiner, University of Minnesota political science professor Dara Strolovitch, and Steve Peha, who heads an education reform consultancy.

"I had hoped for something different," Peha explains. "I had hoped for the president who ran for office, and not so much the one who's in office."

Peha says he's a pragmatist -- he knows that campaigning and governing are different. But "what I wish is that President Obama had worked a little less for his ideal of bipartisanship and a little more for the people who elected him," he says.

This is the prevailing feeling at this week's America's Future Now conference. And no one is hiding it.

There are several things to remark upon here.

One, the Obama administration has easily been the most partisan administration that this country has suffered through since Johnson. His "take it or leave it" strategy for ramming through his health-care scheme is example enough of that. On that charge, the progressives are talking out their ass. They wouldn't know what "bipartisanship" was if it reached across the isle and slugged them.

Two, Obama is the most progressive President this country has had since Woodrow Wilson. Again, his health-care scheme is proof enough of that. We could also talk about his high tax policy and his regulatory policy per Cap and Trade. Then there is that whole financial crises fiasco created by the progressive geniuses Barney Frank and Chris Dodd that Obama managed to make much worse. He even seized control of GM for goodness sake. GM is now a government run enterprise strait out of the Mussolini play book. What do the progressives want! Any more progressive and and this administration would be considering controlling political speech by taxing internet news aggregators or bringing back the "Fairness Doctrine" to radio.

Three, Obama cannot realistically satisfy his hard left supporters. These are the people on the fringe of reality, more inclined to look at working through the constraints of the law and the constitution as backsliding and evidence of a spiritual weakness. These people were going to turn on him no matter what. That doesn't mean that we can't enjoy the schadenfreude while watching his own snakes turn on him.

Heh. . . Here is some "Hope and Change" good and hard you "progressive" dip-shits.

Understanding Poland, Russia And The Horrors Of The Katyn Forests.

Chance and happenstance are sometimes very difficult to accept.

There will be conspiracy theories put forth to explain this terrible tragedy. It is unfortunate. It will not be helpful.

We live in an age where conspiracy theories are a dime a dozen. People seem to find comfort in the thought that bad and terrible things happen because someone or some group of people “conspired” to make them happen.

That bad and terrible things can happen for just plain inane, stupid, or silly reasons, or worse, no reason at all, means that chance and happenstance have more of a role in the currents of history than many people can stand.

For many, simple pilot error will not, can not, be enough. This is too monumental an event. It's timing and location are too significant to be just a mater of simple pilot error.

Sometimes, very bad things happen for no good reason. Sometimes, these things happen in what turn out to be the worst possible circumstance, at the worst possible place, and at the worst possible time - by no one's design. Sometimes, life is just like that. This is one such example.

Chance, Happenstance and cruel reality.

The crash that killed Polish President Lech Kaczynski and so many of Poland's top tier political leaders is a monumental catastrophe. It could not have happened on a worse patch of Russian ground.

The Katyn Forests are the site of a terrible event in Polish and Russian history. In that dark place, over a half century ago, Russia massacred about 22,000 Polish prisoners of war. The prisoners were largely Polish military officers and police officers. Among them were also many Polish political prisoners held by the Soviets. This terrible place, this horrible forest of death, this killing ground of Poland's best and brightest of the 1940's, is a sore and festering wound in the Polish psyche. It still haunts Poland's relations with modern day Russia.

To lose Poland's present day political leaders in this forest now is very terrible. It is terrible for Poland, and terrible for Russia.

Vladimir Putin is a not a nice man. Putin is trying to stay in power, trying to keep Russia from failing and trying to keep Russia relevant and important on the world stage. He is a brutal and thuggish leader of a nation in decline.

The Russian birth rate is so far below replacement rate that it's population is likely to be halved before the end of this century.

Russia is surrounded by hostile nations to the west that resent having been ill treated under the iron boot of the Soviet Empire.

To Russia's south are hostile Islamic nations, Chechnya included, that would love to feast on the rotting corpse of an enfeebled and weak Russia. They are hungry and they have growing populations. Russia will not be able to resist them much in the later part of this century. Russia simply won't have the numbers. When Russia loses the will and the means to hold off the wolves to it's south, they may be able to keep Moscow, if they are lucky. The Rest of Russia will be in dire peril.

Putin has been playing a hard game with the former east block states. He has worked very hard to weaken their resolve and to deny them the means to defend themselves against Russia. It has made relations between Russia and the former east block states unpleasant. But so long as nothing really terrible happens between Russia and the east block states, keeping them militarily weak is worth the price to the Russians of a few harsh words and the hurt feelings of the former east block states.

Then that plane crashed in the worst possible place.

Putin immediately knew that the crash was a terrible event. His quick action to declare himself the head of the investigation into the crash is his attempt to put Russia's best face forward on this disaster. He knows that it has the potential to strain already difficult relations with that former and very resentful east block state. Putin knows that the Poles have little reason to have anything but hatred and contempt for Russia. Now he has their dead President and most of Poland's leaders lying freshly dead in a new smoldering hole in the Katyn Forest.

Keeping the former east block states in check is difficult enough in normal times without having a stark and vivid reminder of how badly they have all fared at Russia's hands in the not so distant past.

I would imagine that in his memoirs, Putin will say that this was one of his worst days.