I doubt we’ll be hearing much good news on the Ukraine front today.

In the meantime, feel free to add a caption in the comments.

H/T: Mashable

“The law of the jungle is placed against the strength of the law, unilateral geopolitical concerns against understanding and cooperation,” she [Ed.: i.e. German Chancellor Angela Merkel] said. “The clock cannot be turned back. Conflicts of interest in the middle of Europe in the 21st century can be successfully overcome only if we don’t fall back on the patterns of the 19th and 20th centuries.”

Merkel has given Putin ample time to prove his claims that ethnic Russians in Crimea are in danger. But he did not permit international inspectors to enter. She also distanced Germany from Washington’s moves to place warships and fighter jets closer to Ukraine, thus affirming German pacifism.

But her patience ran out just days before a March 16 referendum in Crimea that could pave the way for the peninsula on the Black Sea to be annexed by Russia – in violation of international law about secession.

“What we are witnessing now is oppressive, and I fear we need to be prepared for the long haul in solving this conflict,” she said.

If the majority of Russian-speakers in Crimea vote to secede, the EU plans to impose travel bans and asset freezes on Russian leaders involved with violating Ukraine’s sovereignty and territory. Then full economic sanctions will follow.

For its behavior, Russia must feel “massive damage,” Merkel said. And next week, the EU and Ukraine will go ahead and sign the political accord that started the crisis last year when Ukraine’s then-president rejected it, bringing mass protests that led to his ouster.

Her speech signals a new Germany, one ready to take on global leadership as the United States seeks a reduced role during a period of retrenchment. But more important, today’s Germany understands the necessity for nations to make progress. After all, in just seven decades, Germany has “turned a past blighted by war and dominance into a present marked by peace and cooperation,” in the words of its president, Joachim Gauck.

Fareed Zakaria points out the role that Germany played in fomenting the crisis in the first place:

Ukraine is the most important ­post-Soviet country that Russia seeks to dominate politically. If Europe wanted to help Ukraine move west, it should have planned a bold, generous and swift strategy of attraction. Instead, the European Union conducted lengthy, meandering negotiations with Kiev, eventually offering it an association agreement mostly filled with demands that the country make massive economic and political reforms before getting much in the way of access, trade or aid with Europe.

and calls on President Obama to “lead from the front”:

I have generally been wary of the calls for U.S. intervention in any and every conflict around the world. But this is different. The crisis in Ukraine is the most significant geopolitical problem since the Cold War. Unlike many of the tragic ethnic and civil wars that have bubbled up over the past three decades, this one involves a great global power, Russia, and thus can and will have far-reaching consequences. And it involves a great global principle: whether national boundaries can be changed by brute force. If it becomes acceptable to do so, what will happen in Asia, where there are dozens of contested boundaries — and several great powers that want to remake them?

Obama must rally the world, push the Europeans and negotiate with the Russians. In this crisis, the United States truly is the indispensable nation.

Germany has decided to reduce its dependence on nuclear energy and, recently, tried to reduce its reliance on coal, on which it relies for most of its energy needs. Much of Germany’s oil and gas comes from Russia. It will be interesting to see how the Germans plan to power their factories while decreasing their use of nuclear energy, reducing their use of coal, and inflicting “massive damage” on Russia simultaneously.

Meanwhile, Charles Krauthammer urges the president to re-assert the “tripwire” strategy used against North Korea:

● Send the chairman of the Joint Chiefs to the Baltics to arrange joint maneuvers.

● Same for the four NATO countries bordering Ukraine — Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania.

● Urgently revive the original missile-defense agreements concluded with Poland and the Czech Republic before Obama canceled them unilaterally to appease Russia. (But first make sure that the respective governments are willing to sign on again after Obama left them hanging five years ago.)

[…]

● Extend the Black Sea maneuvers in which the USS Truxtun is currently engaged with Romania and Bulgaria. These were previously scheduled. Order immediate — and continual — follow-ons.

● Declare that any further Russian military incursion beyond Crimea will lead to a rapid and favorable response from NATO to any request from Kiev for weapons. These would be accompanied by significant numbers of NATO trainers and advisers.

or, in short, increase military tensions over the matter. What could possibly go wrong? I also surmise that Dr. Krauthammer is unfamiliar with the provisions of the Montreux Convention, which places entry into the Black Sea firmly in the hands of the Turks and limits the total tonnage of the vessels of any single country in the Black Sea. A major difference between North Korea and Russia is that Russia is the largest country in the world with the largest population of any European country. Although not the economic powerhouse that Germany, for example, is, it’s still a middle income country and, given its size, has vast resources. It also possesses a nuclear arsenal large enough to destroy the world.

Quite a few contrasting issues on the matter.

(Plus a video).

For the better part of a year now, former Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown has been mentioned as a potential challenger to Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen in November. Shaheen, of course, is a Senator from New Hampshire instead of Massachusetts, but Brown has taken several steps that have led many observers to believe that he was preparing to take her on, including changing his permanent residence from Massachsetts to New Hampshire early in 2013 and making appearances before Republican groups throughout the state. Now, there are reports that Brown is quietly assembling a campaign staff:

BOSTON — Former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown has begun seeking campaign staff while aggressively courting New Hampshire’s political elite, marking what local Republicans consider his first serious steps toward launching a Senate campaign against Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen.

The stakes are high for the GOP’s national push for the Senate majority this fall as well as for Brown’s own political ambitions.

The longtime Massachusetts resident, having recently relocated to his seacoast New Hampshire vacation home, spent much of the past two weeks calling key New Hampshire Republican officials and influential GOP activists, indicating that he was likely to run and seeking their support. At the same time, Brown’s camp has quietly begun offering paid positions to Republican operatives for a prospective New Hampshire campaign.

Several people involved in the discussions believe that Brown has decided to run, but there remains a healthy dose of skepticism given the former Republican senator’s recent track record. The 54-year-old Brown angered Massachusetts Republicans last year after indicating he would run in the state’s special U.S. Senate election, only to change his mind late in the process.

“He’s been reaching out to opinion leaders, to grassroots activists, getting a sense of, ‘Would you be supporting a Scott Brown campaign,’” said former New Hampshire Rep. Frank Guinta, who is running again for Congress and was included in Brown’s outreach efforts. “That, to me, says he’s serious. But I think only Scott Brown knows if Scott Brown is going to run.”

Democrats hope he does not.

While recent polls give Shaheen a solid lead in a prospective matchup, Brown’s near-universal name recognition in a state that shares a media market with Massachusetts and his national fundraising network would make him a serious contender on Day One should he enter the race

If Brown makes New Hampshire competitive, then that would make the odds of a GOP Senate takeover that much greater, of course.

With the Crimean referendum just days away, it appears the Russian military is warning the Ukrainians that they’d better accept the results:

MOSCOW — Russia’s Defense Ministry announced new military operations in several regions near the Ukrainian border on Thursday, even as Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany warned the Kremlin to abandon the politics of the 19th and 20th centuries or face diplomatic and economic retaliation from a united Europe.

In Moscow, the military acknowledged significant operations involving armored and airborne troops in the Belgorod, Kursk and Rostov regions abutting eastern Ukraine, where many ethnic Russians have protested against the new interim government in Ukraine’s capital, Kiev, and appealed to Moscow for protection.

A day after a deputy minister denied any military buildup on the border, the Defense Ministry released a series of statements beginning early Thursday that appeared to contradict that. They outlined what was described as intensive training of units involving artillery batteries, assault helicopters and at least 10,000 soldiers.

The operations confirmed, at least in part, assertions by Ukrainian leaders on Wednesday that Russia was massing forces, as well as amateur photographs that appeared to show columns of armored vehicles and trucks in a border village called Lopan, only 30 miles from the Ukrainian city Kharkiv. One statement announced that another 1,500 paratroopers from Ivanovo, east of Moscow, had parachuted onto a military base in Rostov, not far from the Ukrainian cities Donetsk and Lugansk.

With NATO announcing its own deployments of fighter jets and exercises to countries on Ukraine’s western border, the crisis appeared to be worsening despite 11th-hour diplomatic efforts to halt a secession referendum scheduled for Sunday in Crimea. The ouster of the government of Viktor F. Yanukovych and Russia’s subsequent intervention in Crimea has deeply divided Russia and the West, and in Berlin, Ms. Merkel underscored the potential risks of what is being called the worst crisis in relations since the end of the Soviet Union.

Appearing before Parliament on Thursday, Ms. Merkel criticized Russia’s actions in some of her toughest language to date, declaring that “the territorial integrity of Ukraine cannot be called into question.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, if Russia continues on its course of the past weeks, it will not only be a catastrophe for Ukraine,” she said. “We, also as neighbors of Russia, would not only see it as a threat. And it would not only change the European Union’s relationship with Russia. No, this would also cause massive damage to Russia, economically and politically.”

With neither side appearing ready t0 back down, the only thing we can do at this point is wait to see what happens after the referendum on Sunday. Actual military conflict between the West and Russia seems incredibly unlikely given that it wouldn’t be in anyone’s interest, but a trade war with Russia would be quite disruptive to the region, as would an era of increased tensions across an East-West border that has been quite calm for decades now.

AEI’s Mark Perry passes along this chart based on data from the Dept. of Agriculture that coffee consumption among American adults has dropped from a high a 45 gallons per adult to less than 20 gallons per adult per year today, a level lower than it has been since the beginning of the 20th Century.

Some of you need to step up your game.

Via the BBC:  Michelle Bachelet sworn in as Chile’s president

Ms Bachelet is the first Chilean president in over half a century to return for a second term.

[...]

Ms Bachelet won 62% of the vote in the second round of the presidential election in December, well ahead of the 38% cast for Evelyn Matthei.

She campaigned on a promise to spend $15bn (£9.2bn) on reforming education, improving health care and reducing income disparity.

She also wants to increase taxes to offer free university education and reform political and economic structures dating from the 1973-1990 dictatorship of Gen Pinochet.

A new Quinnipiac Poll from the Hawkeye State shows Hillary Clinton leading every potential opponent, Republican or Democratic:

Hillary Clinton is a big favorite to win the swing state of Iowa if she runs for president in 2016, according to a new poll.

The Quinnipiac University poll shows Clinton leading four top potential Republican opponents by at least 10 points.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) comes the closest, trailing Clinton 49-39. Clinton beats New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie 48-35; Sen. Ted Cruz (R) 51-35; and former Florida governor Jeb Bush, 51-37.

The poll also has bad news for Vice President Biden, with 62 percent of the state’s voters — including 37 percent of Democrats — saying he would not make a good president.

Obviously, a poll this early out doesn’t tell us much of anything about how elections in 2016 might actually turn out, but they are useful in two respects. First of all, they show the extent to which Hillary Clinton continues to dominate anyone other potential opponent in the Democratic field. While it’s true that this was also the case in the 2008 cycle, the difference between now and then is that there doesn’t seem to be anyone on the Democratic side who could challenge Clinton the way Barack Obama did in 2008. Additionally, poll numbers like this, if they continue, are likely to scare off some potential challengers such as New York Governor Andrew Cuomo who might otherwise enter the race. Second, they should serve as a reminder to Republicans that, while it does look like 2014 will be a good year for the GOP, 2016 has the potential to be very different. Of course, we’ve seen that before. The Republican “revolution” of 1994 was followed two years later by Bill Clinton’s re-election, and the 2010 midterms were followed by Barack Obama’s re-election in 2016. Will we see a repeat of that in 2016? Only time will tell, of course, but based on the numbers right now the GOP faces a serious uphill battle on the road to the White House this time around.

A new Rassmussen Poll appears to show Governor Scott Walker in a tighter race for reelection than many had previously thought:

High-profile Republican incumbent Scott Walker is tied with Democratic challenger Mary Burke in Rasmussen Reports’ first look at the 2014 governor’s race in Wisconsin.

The latest statewide poll of Likely Wisconsin Voters finds Walker and Burke each earning 45% support. Five percent (5%) like some other candidate in the race, and another five percent (5%) are undecided.

The only other recent poll of the Walker-Burke race, from Marquette University, showed Walker with a six point lead back in January. However, that poll was of Registered Voters while Rasmussen is surveying Likely Voters using its own model. Given that this is Rasmussen, it’s worth taking the poll with a grain of salt. Additionally, it’s worth noting that Walker has won two statewide elections in the last four years, including a recall election just two years ago that most polling seemed to show him losing up until the last minute. For that reason alone, I wouldn’t count Walker out by any means, and I’d suggest that we wait for additional polling on this race before jumping to any conclusions.

Nonetheless, Walker’s name is one that often comes up as a potential dark horse candidate for the 2016 GOP nomination and, for that reason alone, how he fares in his reelection bid this year is going to be something that will be closely watched.

Via the BBC:  Salvadorean ex-rebel Sanchez Ceren wins vote – officials

Former left-wing rebel Salvador Sanchez Ceren has won a tight presidential run-off election, El-Salvador’s electoral tribunal has said.

But his rival has the right to appeal and officials say a final declaration cannot yet be made.

Conservative candidate Norman Quijano had earlier called for a new poll after preliminary results indicated a margin of victory of fewer than 7,000 votes.

[...]

The Supreme Electoral Tribunal announced on Thursday that Mr Sanchez Ceren, a member of the Farabundo Marti Liberation Front (FMLN), had won 50.11% of the vote after a manual count.

Mr Quijano, of the conservative Arena party, won 49.89%, the election body said.

The FMLN fought in a brutal civil war against the Salvadoran state from the early 1980s until peace accords in 1992.  After that time the organization made the successful transition from guerrilla movement to political party.

There is likely to be a fight over the results,

On Monday, the president of the Arena party, Jorge Velado, told reporters he had "proof" that his party had won the presidential election.

Three people have died in fresh protests in Venezuela, this time in the central city of Valencia.

A policeman and two other men were shot dead in separate incidents.

In Caracas, Venezuelan government supporters and opposition demonstrators took to the streets to hold rival marches.

The marches mark one month since the current protest movement began – on 12 February. Twenty-five people are now known to have died.

The specifics:

A 42-year old man, Guillermo Sanchez, was painting his house when he was shot in the head by pro-government militias passing on motorbikes, said Mr Cocchiola.

[...]

Student Jesus Enrique Acosta, 20, was also killed in Valencia. Mr Cocchiola said Mr Acosta was also shot dead by the government groups, known as "colectivos".

The other victim was army captain Ernesto Bravo Bracho. The government said he was killed by "criminal terrorists".

There is a short video with key events and scenes from the ongoing unrest at the link and another than contains a news report.

Jan Brewer, whose time as Arizona Governor has been marked by controversies over anti-immigrant legislation, gay rights, and the shooting of former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, announced today that she won’t be running for re-election:

“There does come a time to pass the torch of leadership. After completing this term in office, I will be doing just that,” Brewer said in a speech at the school her children attended.

Brewer had left the door open to running for a third term even though Arizona law limits governors to two terms. She has argued that because she took over for Democrat Janet Napolitano more than halfway through Napolitano’s term, she may be exempted.

Several Republicans have already lined up to run for Brewer’s seat including Secretary of State Ken Bennett and state Treasurer Doug Ducey. Democrat Fred DuVal has the inside track on other side. Republicans are favored to hold the seat given Arizona’s conservative tilt.

I doubt that this is the last we will hear from Brewer, though. There have been suggestions for some time now that she may be among those Republicans looking to challenge John McCain in 2016 if he decides to run for re-election. If McCain decides to retire, then it would seem almost certain that attention would shift to her as the most likely prominent Arizona Republican to jump into the race.

The big news last night was the victory of David Jolly over former Florida Democratic Gubernatorial Candidate Alex Sink in a Special Election to fill the seat of former Republican Congressman Bill Young, who died late last year after having served in Congress for nearly forty years. Leading up to last night’s results, both parties and their surrogates has expended as somewhat astounding $12,000,000 on a race in a district that had been represented by a Republican for some four decades, but which had allegedly been trending Democratic in recent years. For example, Sink herself won the district in 2010 when she ran against Florida Governor Rick Scott and President Obama won the district by some five percentage points in 2012. In both years, of course, Young was re-elected by comfortable margins although the “conventional wisdom” seemed to attribute that more to the fact that he was a popular and long-standing incumbent than to any endorsement of Republicans. At the very least, then, Florida-13 can be characterized as one of the few remaining “swing” districts in the nati0n, meaning that it is one that is potentially capable of going for either party depending on the dynamics of a particular election.

So, does the fact that a Republican won election last night in a district formerly represented by a Republican which had also voted Democratic in recent elections actually mean anything?

Republicans, of course, will want you to believe that it does and that FL-13 is a harbinger of the problems that Democrats will face in the November midterms.  Perhaps in some sense this will turn out to be true. It is certainly the case, for example, the the Jolly campaign and those outside groups that worked on the district on its behalf spent considerable time emphasizing the ongoing problems with the Affordable Care Act, and there will be many in the GOP who will use this victory as evidence in favor their position that this is something that Republican candidates, both at the House and Senate level, should be doing between now and November. In reality, of course, the PPACA was going to be at the center of the GOP’s campaign message regardless of what happened last night, so I’m not sure that the results 0f the Jolly-Sink race actually change anything in that regard.

Democrats, of course, will do their best to try to dismiss the results of the electi0n in Florida. Some of that dismissal was on prominent display last night on Twitter as top Democrats and pundits on the left tried to undercut the results by pointing out that the district had been represented by a Republican for decades. Such comments, of course, ignored the fact that both President Obama and Alex Sink herself had won the district in 2012 and 2010 respectively, and many of them seemed to be little more than a desperate attempt at spin in a year when things are looking very troubling for Democrats as a whole.

So where does the truth lie? Somewhere in between, I think.

Republicans are correct to point out the fact that Sink was expected to win the district based in large part on how the district had been trending in 2010 and 2012, and this is likely yet another harbinger of what is likely to be a good year for the GOP nationwide. At the same time, though, it’s worth noting that the numbers over the past three years suggest that what happened last night in Pinellas County, Florida is likely just a temporary state of affairs.

In that respect, just consider these numbers:

1. In 2010, when most of what is now known as the 13th District was actually the 10th Congressional District, Congressman Young won an overwhelming victory with 137,943 of the 209,256 votes cast.
2. In 2012, Young won the 13th District with 189,605 out of 329,347 votes cast.
3. Last night, according to preliminary results, Jolly received 89.099 votes out of 184.278 votes cast.

In other words, the number of votes cast last night was some 20,000 less than the total number cast in the 2010 General Election, and more than 140,000 fewer than those cast in the 2012 election. Obviously, with turnout like that we’re not getting a very accurate picture of what the 13th District of Florida looks like in a General Election without Bill Young on the ballot, and the idea of trying to draw conclusions about national trends from these results is even more precarious. As many of you may recall, Democrats won all but one of the Special Elections held in advance of the 2010 mid-term elections, and we all know how those elections turned out. Given that, the idea that we can really say anything definitive about what will happen in November based on an election in which turnout was down 12% from 2010 and 44% from 2012 seems rather silly when you think about it.

This is why I think Dave Schuler hits the nail on the head when he makes this point:

My conclusion is that politics remains local and in this election in this year David Jolly was a better candidate for FL-13 than Alex Sink. It might also be good to keep in mind that pundits, pollsters, and reporters in all likelihood aren’t very familiar with the district and have an unavoidable temptation to project their own preferences onto candidates and elections. Conditions might look very different on the ground in the district than they do from Washington, New York, or LA.

Not only do I agree with Dave’s observation that Jolly was likely a better candidate or FL-13, I think the results of the election demonstrate clearly that he was a better campaigner. The best evidence of that can be found in the reports that, while Alex Sink narrowly beat Jolly in the early voting and absentee ballots, Jolly won election day voters by at least 54% to 46% according to the preliminary tallies. This suggests that Jolly had a better Get-Out-The-Vote operation than Sink, and also that he was likely able to rely upon his connections to the late Congressman Young, for whom he worked for many years, to appeal to voters on the ground in a way that Sink did not. If anything, that should be a lesson to Republicans that the way you win elections is by running better campaigns, not just by repeating slogans developed by some Tea Party advocate somewhere.

Nora Caplan-Bricker contends that, “Mike Huckabee Could Be President—If Only He Wanted It.” She provides little evidence of the former, while concentrating on the latter.

Six years as a right-wing media host have not corroded the folksy charisma and self-deprecating wit that were hallmarks of his political persona. The man can charm.

There are Republican kingmakers prepared to bank on just that. When Huckabee ran for president in 2008, the former Arkansas governor and Southern Baptist preacher beat expectations by winning the Iowa caucuses and finishing second in the overall delegate count. He passed on another run two years ago, when race-watchers thought the nomination was within his reach. But the 2016 election might present his best opening yet. Chris Christie is tarred by Bridgegate (etc., etc.). Scott Walker could wind up similarly tarnished by a slow-motion scandal of his own, involving public workers dispatched on campaign tasks. Ted Cruz and Rand Paul are … Ted Cruz and Rand Paul. Meanwhile, early indicators suggest an appetite for Huckabee and his brand of conservative populism: This winter, at least four polls put him at the head of the primary pack—two of them even before Christie’s reputation tanked. The GOP strategists who told me they are urging Huckabee to run recalled how as governor he once earned more than 30 percent of the African American vote in Arkansas, where he also defended social services for immigrants. Huckabee, in this analysis, is the candidate who could bring back the party’s big tent. They hope to convince him to make another go.

Which might prove tempting for Huckabee, if not for the actual campaigning part. At a safe remove from filing deadlines, he has been happily granting interviews to reporters (including this one) to discuss his options. The process of running for office, though, is something “I actually dread,” he has said. And he’s not exactly clearing his schedule. This spring, he is slated to launch an ambitious, conservative-leaning news site called the Huckabee Post. A “major publisher” just bought his twelfth book. Other arms of Huckabee’s octopodian brand include animated American history DVDs and an annual guided tour of Israel, which for a base price of $4,999 offers travelers a “spiritual” experience and “special musical guests,” according to mikehuckabee.com.

“I’d hate to walk away from any of it,” Huckabee says.

So, basically, Huckabee is charming and has name recognition with the Republican base. It’s a start, I guess, but a long way from there to winning the nomination, much less beating the Democratic nominee, whom most presume will be Hillary Clinton, in the general election.

Caplan-Bricker reminds us that Huckabee won Iowa and finished second in the delegate count in 2008. She neglects to mention that the winner of the Iowa Caucuses almost never goes on to win the Republican nomination; John McCain, who won the nomination easily that year, came in fourth. And Huckabee only amassed so many delegates because he remained in the race as a spoiler long after Mitt Romney and others dropped out, conceding that McCain’s nomination was inevitable.

What’s particularly interesting to me is the notion that Huckabee would be the “big tent” candidate. Certainly, that’s not the impression I had of him six years ago was that he was kind of a kook. He was the Christian Right’s stalking horse in a campaign otherwise dominated by two moderate candidates from outside the social conservative wing, McCain and Romney.  At the time of his concession, I observed,

He’s a personable fellow who went a long way with very little money, a weak organization, and zero Establishment support. But there was no time in this race when it was plausible that he’d be the nominee. He won Iowa as the “anybody but Mitt Romney” candidate in a contest McCain, Giuliani, and others skipped. He didn’t win again until garbage time, when he was running as “the conservative alternative” to a man who had all but sewn up the nomination.

Huckabee will not win the nomination in 2012. Or 2016. Or 2020. He’d easily win a Senate seat from Arkansas if he changes his mind. But he’s not going to be elected president.

Huckabee has done nothing to cause me to rethink that assessment. He’s the guy who blamed the Shady Hook massacre on “taking God out of schools” and claims Barack Obama grew up in Kenya. It’s going to take a might weak field, indeed, for Huckabee to win it.

And, as Caplan-Bricker points out in the piece, that assumes he’s got the fire in the belly to run at all. It seems that he’s gotten quite accustomed to making the big bucks at Fox.