"Ukraine in Turmoil," was the headline yesterday (11/26) in the New York Times.  And no wonder.

Twenty years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine is slipping back under Kremlin control, and Ukrainians are deeply angry. Their governments's shock decision to opt for Vladimir Putin's Russia and pull out of EU talks on the eve of a historic deal is a dramatic upset to their freedom - and to the European balance of power.

It is the first major defeat for the EU in its eastward march since the fall of Communism. While the region's geopolitics remain fluid, the upset may prove as fateful as the signing of the Treaty of Pereyaslav in 1654 by the Cossack chief Bohdan Khmelnytsky, who turned his back on the West and agreed to let independent Ukraine be absorbed into the Russian Empire.

"Ukraine's government suddenly bowed deeply to the Kremlin. The politics of brutal pressure evidently work," said Sweden's foreign minister Karl Bildt.  Here's how they work.

The Drudge Report has been running hilarious headlines this week on Anthony "Little" Weiner's run for Mayor of New York.  It was one year ago (last week of May, 2011) that Weinergate broke, resulting in the punniest week ever for the HFR.

How could Drudge resist red-siren headlining the news of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's putdown of Weiner's candidacy as PREMATURE ELECTION, and subtitling the headline with an altered quote of Cuomo:  "Shame on us if we erect him."

Nothing is deadlier to a politician than to be a joke in the eyes of the public.  Jay Leno did it to Zero on The Tonight Show Monday night (5/20).  Here's the transcript but be sure and watch the embedded video of Kids Ask Obama the Darndest Questions.

You know the HMS (His Majesty's Ship) Zero is in danger of sinking when the rats of the Libtard Media have started abandoning it.

On Wednesday (5/22), the editorial staff of the New York Times ran an official op-ed condemning "the Obama administration" for "threatening fundamental freedoms of the press."

And yesterday evening (5/23), the entire home page of HuffPo, the Libtard media's main website, was devoted to a demand that Eric Holder resign:  "TIME TO GO"  blared HuffPo.

The only news this week that could possibly be better than Holder soon to be an ex-AG is this.

Mrs. Zero  will be taking an "extended vacation" for the next few months, running away and hiding from the world and shutting up so we won't have to suffer her insufferable busybody hectoring.

Tax revenue in 2013 will be lower (despite the just passed tax increase), and government spending will be higher than forecast. It's an easy prediction -- and this is why.

The capital gains tax rate and the tax on dividends is being raised from 15 percent to 23.5 percent for higher-income people. There are many studies, including those made by the U.S. Treasury, showing that the revenue-maximizing rate on capital gains is less than 15 percent.

Taking a capital gain is often a discretionary event, and it is well documented that capital gains realizations fall as the rate is increased. Thus, this rate increase will be a net revenue loser for the government.

Expenditures will also be far higher than forecast. The simple fact is the Obama administration and Congress, particularly the Democrats, are unable to resist the urge to spend more.

My friends at RegimeChangeIran have just received a copy of a secret report prepared by the Pasdaran Revolutionary Guards, Iran’s key security forces, for Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. It warns they would be unable to control a demonstration or rebellion in Tehran lasting longer than six hours.

Here’s the report’s key confession:

Society is in an unstable state. Were certain sensitive locations in Tehran to 'explode' under these circumstances, and the capital sink into chaos, if uprisings continue unabated and grow larger for more than six hours in Tehran, the situation would become uncontrollable.

The Chinese Communist Party is trying to continue pulling off the trick that has served it ever since Deng Xiaoping defeated the Gang of Four: more economic freedom combined with less political freedom. The people can choose any good or service they want - except their government.

In many ways it has worked extremely well. In 1978 Maoism had left the country horribly poor: more than half the people of China tried to live on less than a dollar a day. Over the next nine years per capita income doubled, then doubled again over the nine years after that.

Many a left-leaning Western politician has been heard to muse about how much better we would grow if only we directed the market economy with the single-mindedness of the Chinese Communist Party. See, they mutter, a paternalistic government is best at generating economic prosperity.

Yet this is precisely the wrong lesson to draw from China. It's not because it's unfree at the top that China is growing fast, but because, at least in some respects, it is very free at the bottom. The extraordinary fact is that - economically - the average Chinese person is more free from government interference than the average Westerner.

You may have been reading how the Federal Reserve has been buying huge quantities -- almost a trillion dollars' worth -- of "mortgage-backed securities" (MBS). There is a relatively high probability that this program is going to end in disaster -- and here is why.

The Fed is a government institution, fully owned by citizen taxpayers. The dollars it creates only have value to the extent people believe that the Internal Revenue Service can extract real wealth from taxpayers to equal the value of the new dollars being created.

Either Congress will have to vote for more taxes (or engage in less spending) to obtain the wealth to cover the new money, or the Fed's printing of money will cause inflation, thereby reducing the value of the money that individuals and businesses have or receive in exchange for the government bonds they have purchased.

There are many reasons why inflation could suddenly surge and the Fed would lose control.

One difference between younger and older folks is that the former feel “endless possibilities of the future,” while the latter feel the future closing in on them. Time seems repetitive - like being caught in Groundhog Day with Bill Murray. This is a significant drain on one’s mental energy. An openness to the future, on the other hand, creates a youthful mental energy.

Such a feeling of endless possibilities requires new neuronal connections in the brain. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks because the dog’s brain has become static, and has lost the capacity to grow new neurons and to establish new connections between neurons old and new. Now there may be a clever way with quite sophisticated nutrients to regrow new neurons and neuronal connections, literally youthening your brain.