Putin Mania

Russia arrests former world chess champion Garry Kasparov, along with other pro-democracy demonstrators, in a continued crackdown by muscle-flexing near dictator Putin on his opponents. Independent media has been systematically shutdown, journalists and opponents mysteriously murdered. WSJ:

Russia made halting progress in establishing rule of law and an independent judiciary in the years after the Soviet Union's collapse. But Mr. Putin has reversed course. The pivotal event was the Yukos prosecution, when the Kremlin used a tax evasion charge to destroy Russia's richest man, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and its biggest oil company.

Yukos's choicest bits were sold to a state-owned oil company for a song, as part of the Kremlin effort to control Russian energy assets. Mr. Khodorkovsky, a Putin rival, is serving a 10-year sentence in Siberia. In subsequent years, the courts were instrumental in forcing Royal Dutch Shell out of a multibillion dollar energy exploration project and to pressure other international majors.

Then we have the spectacle of a few fledgling capitalists in Russia making the rope to hang themselves, selling Putin T-shirts and coats with hammer and sickle buttons. NY Times:

“People in their 30s see these kinds of symbols as reminders of happy memories, like going to pioneer camp where they lived together, ate breakfast together and played sports,” said Mr. Simachev, 33, who wears his hair in a Samurai-style ponytail. He insists he is no Communist — for one thing, his overcoats sell for about $2,100 and his T-shirts for about $600. His boutique is sandwiched between Hermès and Burberry stores on a pedestrian lane, Stoleshnikov, that is one of the capital’s most expensive shopping streets.

Well, Simachev may not be a communist, but his well-heeled, well-connected customers probably are. But if he's forced out of business there, assuming Putin allows him to leave, he can probably find a market here among gullible and ignorant Leftists looking for the latest anti-capitalist chic, no matter the source. Here's one, who wrote a guest piece to the Tribune in outrage:

The image of Latin American revolutionary Che Guevara decorates an entire wardrobe of T-shirts being marketed to American teens by American companies. Has the average wearer read Guevara? Can he or she even pronounce his name? And if Guevara could talk, what do you think the staunch anti-capitalist would say about the Third World labor policies that make those $10 Che T-shirts so affordable?

Che's bloodstained, murderous past is just a footnote to the foolish fashionistas and the conventional wisdom of liberal elites.

And Putin suggests we are trying to taint his elections by manipulating observers, echoing Dem talking points about ours and cynically trying to insulate himself from criticism--after all, in the Dem view of things attempting to steal an election is held up as a model of making every vote count--it's just some count more than others.