“It’s a tragedy, a human tragedy, that the middle class in this country by and large doesn’t believe that the future will be better than the past,” he said. “We haven’t seen rising incomes over decades.”

 “The rich have gotten richer, income inequality has gotten worse and there are more people in poverty than ever before under this president,” he added.

I can’t tell you, folks, how tired I am of always being so right. How many times did I say that the correct message to be pushing was “Obama dramatically improved the economy”? First of all, because that’s the truth. And second of all, because the message you so adore and that I quoted above is very easily co-opted by the Republicans in 2016. Is there any doubt in anybody’s mind that if a Republican president achieved, in terms of the economy, what Obama has in his presidency we would be hearing it celebrated and yelled from the rooftops all day and every day?

In case there are people who have been asleep for the past two days, the “he” in the quote above is Mitt Romney. Prepare to hear more of the same in the coming two years from overfed billionaires who have suddenly discovered the words that will make the entire country go weak in the knees.

We could have avoided this if we had gotten over our profound need constantly to feel sorry for ourselves and accepted that the recession was over and it was cause for celebration. It is highly likely that your love of apocalyptic thinking guaranteed us a Republican in the White House come 2016.

We had the 2016 election in our collective pockets until you had to go and piss it all away with your insistence that anything short of paradise is beneath you and any achievement that doesn’t bring your directly into heaven on Earth is not an achievement but an offense to your sensibilities. And now this wave of infantile resentment will be exploited to carry a Bush or a Romney into the White House. Good job! The enjoyment you must have derived from ridiculing any suggestion that the economy was improving must have totally been worth it.

Oh well. At least, it will be good for Ukrainians. 

The fighting has intensified in Ukraine this week. The Russians are using Obama’s obvious reluctance to act on the bill adopted by Congress that promised aid to Ukraine. At the same time, everybody is distracted right now by the massacre in Paris, and the Russians are using this to conduct a full-scale offensive.

Yesterday and the day before there was another big battle for the Donetsk Airport. The Russians brought fresh troops and sophisticated weaponry to the airport. After a long and exhausting battle, Ukrainians won yet again.

This is the worst type of warfare for Ukraine: a simmering low-intensity conflict that flares up every once in a while. The whole point of the Ukrainian revolution of 2013 was to conduct reforms and transform the country from a corrupt, sleepy mafia haven to a vibrant European state. This is precisely what the Russians don’t want. They sabotage Ukraine ‘ s project of reform by slowly draining the country of resources through an endless simmering conflict. It’s easy for Russia to do that since it isn’t pursuing any creative project of its own. Its entire creative agenda right now is limited to “Let’s stick it to the Americans.” So they can go on and on fighting. There’s nothing else to do in Russia that’s fun.

Realistically, the only hope for Ukraine right now is to resist until 2016 and then hope that a Republican gets elected in the US.