Political commentators have made up their minds about Vladamir Putin regaining the Russian presidency, regardless of the large vocal opposition that continues to demonstrate in the streets. Whether he wins legitimately with his base of supporters in the Russian frontier or rigs the outcome like last year’s legislative elections, it is assumed that his return to the presidency is inevitable.

But what is also becoming inevitable is that Putin won’t be able to retain control of his presidency for the next six years. The Putin regime has already lost some legitimacy in all the upheaval and the protesters are preparing for the long-haul. As internet access chisels away at the power of Russia’s state-owned media and cracks appear in Putin’s public facade, it’s only a matter of time before serious regime change takes place. The question now is whether Putin will have to step down early like his unpopular predecessor Boris Yeltsin or whether an armed uprising like those sweeping through the Arab world will ultimately do him in.

Your worst enemy

If you’re going to Russia or China, you’d better leave your phone at home says the New York Times. It doesn’t really surprise me that hackers in Russia and China are tapping into foreigners’ digital devices to grab passwords, steal trade secrets, and spy on people. What does surprise me are the lengths to which companies and governments are going to prevent these kind of security breaches. These range from avoiding typing passwords directly into their devices by copying their passwords from USB drives to preventing a phone’s microphone from being used even when powered off by removing the batteries to the extreme that McAfee takes: “if any employee’s device was inspected at the Chinese border, it could never be plugged into McAfee’s network again. Ever.”

The digital world is opening the door to all sorts of high-tech theft, espionage, and industrial sabotage. Now we have to constantly check our gadgets to make sure they haven’t been bugged. Does this mean we’ll all have to live more like James Bond?

We’ve watched for months as the bloodshed in Syria escalated, to the point that Syria’s neighbors and several Western countries have come to an agreement that something must been done soon to wrestle control away from Syrian President al-Assad. Unfortunately, with Russia and China blocking action by the UN Security Council, there are not a lot of good options left on the table. Pulling ambassadors and sending diplomatic communiques are fine and dandy, but they haven’t brought any change in the situation in Syria for the past few months.

Something more forceful needs to be done, but Americans don’t want another war and the West’s intervention in Libya’s civil war last year is one reason Russia and China gave for using their veto in the Security Council when a demand for ousting Assad was brought to a vote (lucrative arms deals and trade are the other, less-publicized reasons for their vetoes). Regardless, the military and intelligence communities in the United States are gearing up for something and commentators are lining up to show why this will or will not be like the Libya intervention.

Will we use another no-fly zone and tactical bombing campaign with no clear political solution after Assad is gone? Or are we going to arm rebels that we’ll fight ourselves a couple decades later like we did in Afghanistan when the Soviets invaded and in Iraq when they were at war with Iran? Or are we going to talk about it for another six months while more Syrians die? There’s just nothing good that we can do.

After 31 years of building an advanced economy by exporting high-tech gadgets to the world, Japan has joined the United States in the pantheon of rich countries that don’t bother making stuff anymore. Japan is now experiencing a trade deficit resulting from an aging workforce, unfair competition from cheap Chinese labor, and natural disasters disrupting domestic production. At least we won’t be alone in our decade of decline.

Hillary Clinton insists she’ll be stepping down as Secretary of State after the election, with no future plans in politics. I find that hard to believe. She may not be the replacement for Biden on the 2012 ticket like so many of her supporters want to see, but she’s certainly going to be active in politics. She ‘s got to have something to keep her mind off Bill. But what will she do next?

The Hill has an interesting list of the top ten lobbying victories of 2011. The oil industry’s American Petroleum Institute made the list twice.

Nobody will argue against the fact that we have deficits and a huge debt because we’re spending more than we bring in. The political extremes tell us we can either cut the budget back to the stone age or raise taxes until every little mom-and-pop shop is shuttered. Those are our only two choices. No room for compromise.

Cutting the massive budget nobody fully understands (let alone reads) has been a more popular option than adjusting the tax system, but only a mix of the two will get us out of our debt mess without destroying the weak economy or gutting the safety net that’s keeping people alive until the economy improves.

Why haven’t we been able to raise revenues? It’s not just the Tea Party ideologues’ fault. Both parties benefit from corporate largess, which is the real reason why politicians in Washington have been unwilling to crack down on tax loopholes or even *gasp* raise taxes in over a decade. It’s a shame since many CEOs make more money than their entire corporation pays in taxes. But as long as those CEOs bankroll reelection campaigns and the Supreme Court defends the contributions as free speech, we’re stuck with the same broken revenue system that hasn’t been able to pay our bills for years.

In Communist China, traffic jams you…

Added more think tanks from both sides of the political spectrum and clarified the descriptions of some others.

Soccer… the only sport where the United States routinely loses to third world countries… like Ghana.