'The vast majority of uninsured Americans do not know they must sign up for health insurance by March 31 or pay a fine, according to a new poll...'

That would be the Kaiser Family Foundation "Health Tracking Poll" for February 2014, blogged at Jammie Wearing Fools, "Kaiser Poll: 76% of Uninsured Unaware of ObamaCare Sign-Up Deadline."

Click through for the survey, aggregated at Memeorandum. Among the findings:

While most Americans (54 percent) continue to say they haven’t been impacted by the law one way or another, the share saying they’ve been negatively affected has inched up in recent months (29 percent in February, up from 23 percent last October) and continues to outpace the share saying they’ve personally benefited from the law (17 percent)....

When it comes to next steps on the law, a majority say it should be kept in place, including 48 percent who want Congress to work to improve it and 8 percent who say it should be kept as is. Fewer say Congress should repeal the law and replace it with a Republican-sponsored alternative (12 percent) or repeal it and not replace it (19 percent). Like opinions on the law overall, views about next steps are deeply divided by political party identification, with most Democrats preferring to keep the law in place and a majority of Republicans wanting to see it repealed. Among independents, more than half want Congress to keep the law as is or work to improve it, while a third prefer to see it repealed.

Keep reading.

The main takeaway for me is the enormous uncertainty that still surrounds this legislation. Opinion on ObamaCare is still very much in flux, and it's especially interesting that the majority have no personal experience with the law, which means as more costs are spread around, and quality of care deteriorates as people are shuffled into those narrow-networks (which people oppose), support is likely to decline. Also especially interesting is the number of those uninsured who oppose the law. Young Americans are especially unhappy about ObamaCare. Indeed, the Harvard Institute of Politics poll last December saw younger Millennials jonesing to recall President Obama from office (although we can't do that through the ballot box).

In any case, political campaigns have a way of shaping public opinion on the issues and it's obvious that most Democrats running for reelection would rather not talk about ObamaCare. So, overall the ball's in the GOP's court. The public's not all that big on ObamaCare repeal. But key demographics don't like it and thus overall numbers could shift in the GOP's direction as implementation proceeds (disastrously).

Very fluid all around --- and you gotta love the level of ignorance on the individual mandate! We'll be getting a lot more horror stories throughout the year on the tax penalties, although the hilarious big meme among idiot Democrats claims that Republicans are pushing "fake" horror stories for the November run-up. Progressives, heh. They're so stupid it almost hurts, lol.

Mercedes-Benz to Base Its Regional Office in Long Beach

I saw this in the news rack for the Long Beach Register while out to lunch the other day, and now here it is at the parent newspaper, the O.C. Register:

Since Mercedes-Benz USA announced plans to lease a 1.1 million-square foot Boeing plane factory in July, the luxury automaker has kept its plans for the former Long Beach facility a tightly guarded secret.

But an executive with Irvine-based Sares-Regis Group, which is the landlord for the 52.2 acres at 4501 E. Conant St., said that Mercedes-Benz plans to use the facility as its vehicle preparation facility and regional office for the western United States, and as a training center.

With the exception of the main airplane hangar, the fenced-in plant has been mostly turned into a huge parking lot with fresh concrete laid along Conant.

Larry Lukanish, a senior vice president with Sares-Regis, also says Mercedes-Benz will test, inspect, customize and prepare new cars for transfer to dealerships.

Sares-Regis, which bought the property in July 2012, plans to turn the property over to Mercedes-Benz USA on March 1 to begin a 15-year lease, Lukanish said.

Chicago-based Boeing Co. shuttered the facilities at the corner of Conant and Lakewood Boulevard in 2006, when the last 717 commercial jet rolled off the line. Boeing inherited the plane when it acquired McDonnell Douglas Corp. in 1997. The plane was originally called the MD-95 but never caught on with major airlines. The hangar is still on the property, which has a large “Fly DC Jets” sign on top. The factory, which employed thousands for decades, once built some of the world's most popular airlines, including the DC-3, DC-8 and MD-80.

Several outbuildings were demolished and tunnels under Lakewood Boulevard were filled, Lukanish said. The hangar interiors remain unchanged with the exception of painting, removal of old cranes and a mezzanine structure.

Mariella Kapsaskis, a spokeswoman with Mercedes-Benz USA's corporate headquarters in Montvale, N.J., confirmed portions of Lukanish's disclosure. She said in a statement that the car manufacturer would be consolidating its Western regional offices, its training and performance center and vehicle preparation center under a single roof in Long Beach as a means of improving overall efficiency. This includes its regional office in Irvine and its vehicle preparation center in Carson.

She couldn't comment on whether those two offices would be closed or how many employees would be affected.

Beyond California, the other regional offices are located in Jacksonville, Fla.; Parsippany, N.J.; and Rosemont, Ill.

Well, I drive by the facility everday, which is right next to my campus. I've been meaning to take some pictures but I just never stop and make the time. (Besides, it's been a demolition site mostly, since part of the facility included an old hanger that was torn down to make way for the huge concrete lot they've created on the grounds.) It'll be opening soon though, so I'll update when I get the chance to take some pics.

More here.

RELATED: From last summer at LAT, "Mercedes-Benz leases old Boeing jet factory in Long Beach."

Bitcoin Virtual Currency Market Crashes

Funniest thing, but a student on Monday said that he'd invested in Bitcoin. I forgot exactly how this came up during discussion. Mostly we were talking about state sovereignty and one of my students got on the topic of a "cashless economy," and then the young guy in the back started in with Bitcoin. We talked about it for five minutes or so, heh.

And then here comes the news from yesterday morning, "Shutdown of Mt. Gox Rattles Bitcoin Market: Closure Raises Concern About the Future of Unregulated Virtual Currency."

And at LAT, "Bitcoin virtual currency is on the verge of collapse":

It was supposed to revolutionize the global monetary system. Instead, the bitcoin virtual currency that has captured the imagination of investors and financiers is on the verge of collapse.

In a stunning blow to a novel way to buy products and services, the world's largest exchange for trading bitcoin currency shut down Tuesday, triggering a massive sell-off and sending many prospective investors away — perhaps for good.

"This is extremely destructive," said Mark Williams, a risk-management expert and former Federal Reserve Bank examiner. "What we're seeing is a lot of the flaws. It's not only fragile, it's fragile as eggshells."

The mysterious circumstances that triggered the failure of the exchange, Mt. Gox in Tokyo, is only adding to the renewed anxiety over the virtual currency, which just a month earlier had been gaining momentum and supporters.

After saying users could not withdraw their funds, Mt. Gox suddenly ceased all operations, including shutting down its website. Mt. Gox users may have lost more than $300 million worth of bitcoins in what was the latest and biggest in a series of recent setbacks for the virtual currency.

The currency exists only online, and its value is based on an algorithm. Investors buy bitcoins with dollars, euros and other real currency. A purchase with bitcoins typically involves transferring an amount from the buyer's bitcoin "digital wallet" to the seller's wallet on the Internet.

The blow to bitcoin's credibility has highlighted all the fears critics have been trying to raise. Because it is unregulated and anonymous, there is probably no way for users to know who may have seized the thousands of missing bitcoins — and no way to recover them.

This sudden reversal of fortune is particularly painful for enthusiasts who believed just a few weeks ago that bitcoin was on the cusp of mainstream acceptance because of growing support from venture capitalists, banks and regulators.

Instead of triumph, the bitcoin community is now focused on repairing the damage. Mt. Gox is nothing more than a "collapsed tower of toxic sludge," said Williams, who is also a finance professor at Boston University School of Management...

Well, I described Bitcoin as a "fad" on Monday, and that might be the perfect word for it in the end.

Still more here.

So, I watched 'The Bachelor' With the Wife Last Night...

Haven't been watching it this season, with the Olympics and who knows what else has been on.

But last night's show was pretty good, especially the location at Saint Lucia.

Here's a recap, at the Kansas City Star, "The ‘Bachelor’ dumped again, but not by KC’s Nikki Ferrell." And at People, "Chris Harrison on The Bachelor: 'Essentially, Juan Pablo Was Dumped'."

My wife and I like Clare, and no doubt she's in love with him. He should give her the final rose and propose, but well see. (Video from earlier on the show, "The Bachelor - Juan Pablo Has a Serious Talk with Clare.")

Harriet Harman and British Labour's Ties to Criminal Paedophile Information Exchange

Well, I promised an update Sunday when I posted on this, "Britain's Leftist Apologists for Pedophilia."

Yesterday, while checking Louise Mensch's feed on Twitter, it looked like all hell was breaking loose with Britain's Labor Party, with all kinds of calls for the resignation of Shadow Deputy Prime Minister Harriet Harman.

And here's the story at London's Daily Mail, which has broken this investigation wide open, "But they still won't say sorry: Labour's Harman and Dromey finally break their silence over links to paedophile group," and "Labour's deputy leader Harriet Harman expresses 'regret' over links to paedophile lobby – but STILL won’t apologise."

As usual, I tweeted a piece to Robert Stacy McCain, and then later he had this, "The UK Left’s Pro-Pedophile Past."

'Saddle Ridge Hoard' — California Couple Finds Buried Treasure Worth $10 Million in Their Backyard

What a story.

At the San Francisco Chronicle, "Gold Country couple discovers $10 million in buried coins."

Read it at the link, with photos. The coins were in mint condition. It's a tale straight out of the Old West.

Former CNN Correspondent Miles O'Brien Left Arm Amputated After Accident

Well, thank God he's alive. I always liked him. He had (has) a love for his craft, as well as science, that I always appreciated.

Saw this first at London's Daily Mail, "Former CNN journalist's arm amputated after minor injury caused by falling TV equipment developed rare complications."

And also at CNN, "Former CNN correspondent Miles O'Brien has arm amputated after accident."

And go straight to O'Brien's blog, "'Just a Flesh Wound'":

I wish I had a better story to tell you about why I am typing this with one hand (and some help from Dragon Dictate).

A shark attack would be interesting. An assassination attempt would be intriguing. Skydiving mishaps always make for good copy. An out-of-control quad copter that turns on its master would be entertaining (and would come complete with a grim, potentially viral, video).

No, the reason I am now one-handed is a little more prosaic than those scenarios.

Keep reading.

Smokin' Nina Agdal in New Accessorize Campaign

At London's Daily Mail, "EXCLUSIVE: So THAT'S what Leo DiCaprio sees in her! Nina Agdal looks incredible in new Accessorize campaign... but reveals she's partial to a burger."

She did the hot Carls Jr. ad last year, so it makes sense.

And of course, she's on the cover of the new Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition, "Nina Agdal, Lily Aldridge, Chrissy Teigen Land Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Cover."

Comcast and Netflix Get Together and Solve Their Own Problem

I didn't quite fully understand the big deal about his story earlier, at WSJ, "Netflix to Pay Comcast for Smoother Streaming: Deal Ends Standoff, Might Serve as Precedent for Relations With Other Broadband Suppliers" (via Google). Also at the Verge, "Netflix is paying off Comcast for direct traffic access."

But Holman Jenkins has an excellent primer on the (significance of the) deal, "How the Internet Was Meant to Be":

Netflix's NFLX +1.35%  Reed Hastings routinely touted their ideal to gain leverage over downstream carriers like Comcast. CMCSA -0.74%  Then a federal court in January invalidated Washington's net-neut rules and he rushed out a statement of the obvious to reassure shareholders, saying in essence: Never mind! Comcast et. al. don't really have an economic or political incentive to block our service. Just the opposite. Consumer expectations of the Internet are set. Carriers must supply unimpeded access to every kind of web content or else.

The net-neut zealots would have been wise at this point to declare victory, if not admit they had been praying to a false god all along. Now they've been thrown into fresh confusion by Mr. Hastings's deal this week with the ultimate devil symbol, cable giant Comcast.

Mr. Hastings's agreement with Comcast does not actually violate the letter of net neutrality, but it does violate the big hazy ideal of a single vast pipe through which anonymous ones and zeros democratically and communally flow. In essence, Netflix will pay to dump its bits directly into Comcast's last-mile network, rather than by way of an Internet backbone supplier. But let's wipe away our tears. The deal is a triumph of the Internet's nonideological adaptability and flexibility.

Netflix faced a problem: stuttering video performance because of upstream bottlenecks that belied the high-speed downstream service customers are paying for. Why? At bottom, the happy equilibrium of the old two-way Internet has gone bye-bye thanks to a one-way video deluge stemming mainly from YouTube and Netflix.

Now in other newspapers you can read experts fretting that the cost of Netflix's solution will be "passed along" to Netflix's customers. This is idiotic. All businesses collect their costs from their customers or they aren't long in business. But the real question here wasn't who bears the cost. It was who bears the incentive to handle traffic efficiently.

Cogent Communications, CCOI -5.57%  a content delivery network, was getting paid by Netflix to deliver loads of content to Comcast, without any incentive to care about Comcast's capacity to receive it.

So Comcast could either accept an unlimited obligation to accommodate whatever traffic Netflix and its intermediate partners wanted to send, however inefficiently they wanted to send it—as, in fact, happened after Mr. Hastings in September decided every Netflix customer would get its new "SuperHD" feed.

Or Comcast could resist a blank check being drawn on its network in the only way available to it—by letting traffic back up at its interconnection point until Cogent and Netflix cried uncle.

A better solution was shriekingly obvious: Let Comcast and Netflix transact directly. Because Netflix would be helping to pay for the costs it imposes on Comcast, Netflix would have proper incentive to deliver its services efficiently. This would benefit Netflix customers and everybody else trying to send traffic through the backbone.

But if the net-neut crazies are flummoxed, the media are desperately confused about what just happened, saying it amounts to proof of Comcast's overweening power...

Keep reading.

RELATED: At LAT, "Comcast strikes deal to buy Time Warner Cable for $45 billion."

George Harrison's Birthday — 'Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth)'

George Harrison would have been 71 today.

Check the Wikipedia entry for "Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth)," which I listened to on the way home at the Sound L.A.



RELATED: At Rolling Stone, "Beach Boys' Mike Love Honors George Harrison With Unreleased Track."

How the Founding Father Used to Pound Back the Booze

This is great, at Reason, "George Washington: Boozehound":

Reason TV's Meredith Bragg informed us of George Washington’s whiskey production. He didn’t tell us, however, about Washington’s alcohol consumption, which was, at times, prodigious. That consumption by Washington and his fellow founding fathers has been whitewashed—sometimes literally—from American history by the intervening Temperance movement, whose effects still drive us. For instance, the classic picture of Washington taking his farewell from his troops at Fraunces Tavern in New York—which, of course, involved a toast—was painted with a serving flask clearly visible. This container was painted out of these same pictures later, in the nineteenth century, reminiscent of Soviet photos with purged former leaders excised.

It is impossible for Americans to accept the extent to which the Colonial period—including our most sacred political events—was suffused with alcohol. Protestant churches had wine with communion, the standard beverage at meals was beer or cider, and alcohol was served even at political gatherings. Alcohol was consumed at meetings of the Virginian and other state legislatures and, most of all, at the Constitutional Convention.

Indeed, we still have available the bar tab from a 1787 farewell party in Philadelphia for George Washington just days before the framers signed off on the Constitution. According to the bill preserved from the evening, the 55 attendees drank 54 bottles of Madeira, 60 bottles of claret, eight of whiskey, 22 of porter, eight of hard cider, 12 of beer, and seven bowls of alcoholic punch.

That's more than two bottles of fruit of the vine, plus a number of shots and a lot of punch and beer, for every delegate. That seems humanly impossible to modern Americans. But, you see, across the country during the Colonial era, the average American consumed many times as much beverage alcohol as contemporary Americans do. Getting drunk—but not losing control—was simply socially accepted...

RTWT (via Instapundit).

Extreme Sports Boost USA at #Sochi

Must admit I was getting a kick out of the slopestyle.

At USA Today, "Extreme sports mark changing of U.S. Olympic guard":

SOCHI - For the U.S. team, the Sochi Games signified an end of an era. Goodbye, ice queens. Hello, flippie hippies. See you later, pucks and sticks. Nice to meet you, slopes and rails.

As 17 days of competition came to a close Sunday, this much was clear: The face of the Winter Olympics no longer wears skates. Twelve of the USA's 28 medals came from freestyle skiing and snowboarding, including six of nine gold.

The U.S. Olympic team had never won a medal on every day one was awarded in the Winter Games, and through 14 days in Sochi, the Americans were poised to do that. But the men's hockey team failed to show up in Saturday's bronze medal game, losing to Finland 5-0.

If only the kids in baggy pants with a language all their own had competed in the Games' final days, perhaps the USA could have gone out with more of a bang. Instead, Russia ended this cold war with a flourish — sweeping the podium in the men's 50-kilometer cross-country ski race Sunday and winning gold in four-man bobsled to secure the top spot with 33 overall medals and 13 golds.

For decades, figure skating was the marquee event of the Games. In Sochi, the U.S. men and women figure skaters had their worst collective finish since 1936. Speedskating has been the USA's most successful winter sport. But the short-track team left with one medal and the long-track team exited empty-handed, complaining about their suits.

In contrast, the Americans dominated the action sports events — slopestyle skiing and snowboarding and halfpipe skiing — that made their debut. When the next Winter Games is held in Pyeongchang, South Korea, in 2018, Americans are again expected to be strong in the extreme sports. If more events are added to the program — perhaps big air and a team snowboard cross event — the U.S. medal haul likely will grow as well.

"When you look at the impact that adding the sports has had on the Winter Games, it's made the Games more popular from a broadcast standpoint and for the people who are here," U.S. Olympic Committee CEO Scott Blackmun said.

Keep reading.

The Truth About the U.N.

From Danny Ayalon. It's starts out a little unfocused at the beginning, but it's good.

Rousing the Americans from their slumber

From Caroline Glick:

In an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times Wednesday, former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton warned his countrymen of the disaster that awaits them if President Barack Obama does not change the course of US Middle East policy.

Bolton warned that Obama’s three-pronged policy, based on three negotiation tracks with Iran, Syria, and the Palestinians and Israel, will almost certainly fail in its entirety.

In his words, “Iran will emerge more powerful, verging on deliverable nuclear weapons, while still financing and arming terrorists worldwide. [Syrian President Bashar] Assad seems likely to survive, which is bad enough by itself, but it will be compounded by the affirmation it affords Iranian and Russian strength. Israel will trust Wash – ington even less than now, and ironically, Palestinians will be even more anti-American, because Obama will not be able to deliver to them the Israeli concessions he predicted.”

Bolton concluded mournfully, “[T]he increasing danger is that only another 9/11, another disaster, will produce the necessary awakening. There is tragedy ahead for our country if we continue on this course.”

Writing for Strafor the same day, strategic analyst George Friedman explained why Bolton’s warning will be ignored by the public.

Friedman noted that in previous years, recent events in  Venezuela, Ukraine, Russia and beyond would have been the subject to intense public concern. But, he wrote, “This week, Americans seemed to be indifferent to all of them.”

Friedman argued that this popular indifference to foreign policy is not driven by ideological attachment to isolationism, as was the case in the 1930s. “It is an instrumental position,” not a systematic one, he explained. Because he sees no deep-seated attachment to isolationism among the American public, Friedman argued that their current indifference will likely end when circumstances change.

Friedman’s analysis of the American mood is probably right. And Bolton is certainly right about the dangers inherent to that mood.

Every day the US is subject to greater humiliations and challenges to its power and prestige.

Declarations from Iranian leaders rejecting the dismantling of their nuclear installations, coupled with threats to attack US installations and Israel, bespeak contempt for American power and convey a catastrophic erosion of US deterrent capabilities against Tehran.

As subjects of intense US appeasement efforts, the Palestinians are second only to Iran. And as is the case with Iran, those efforts come at the direct expense of Israel, the US’s most important ally in the Middle East.

Yet like the Iranians, the Palestinians greet US efforts with scorn. Every day Palestinian leaders pile on their incitement against Israel and Jews and their derisive condemnations of the Obama administration’s efforts to force Israel to cater to their every whim.

Since 1979, Egypt served as the anchor of the US alliance structure in the Arab world. It shared the US’s opposition to Islamic terrorism, and waged a continuous campaign to defeat the forc – es of jihad in Egypt, while remaining outside the circle of war against Israel.

When protests began in Egypt three years ago, rather than stand with its ally, Obama dumped Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and sided with the jihadist Muslim Brotherhood.

After winning a popular election, the Brotherhood immediately set about transforming Egypt into an Islamic, pro-jihadist state. And yet, the administration opposed the military’s decision to oust the Brotherhood from power last summer even though the move prevented the most strategically vital Arab state from becoming the cen – ter of the global jihad. It then cut US military aid to Egypt.

So now the military regime is renewing its ties with Russia, after ditching Moscow for Washing – ton in 1974.

AND SO it goes, throughout the world...

Continue reading.

Venezuelan Media Ignores Protests

At WSJ, "Venezuela Media Largely Ignored Protests: Free-Speech Advocates Say Black Out Points to State Intimidation (via Google):

CARACAS—As some of the biggest anti-government protests in months gathered momentum across the country earlier this week, Venezuela's largest private television networks largely broadcast soap operas and entertainment shows.

When the demonstrations turned violent in Caracas and three people died, the coverage was largely blacked out, press-freedom organizations and journalists said Friday. Government officials appeared on state television to accuse opposition leaders of instigating violence to topple the state.

One private television station offering live coverage, NTN24, based in Colombia but widely seen on cable here, was taken off the air in the midst of covering the bedlam on Wednesday. President Nicolas Maduro on Thursday explained that the plug was pulled "to defend the right to tranquility, and no one is going to come here from abroad to ruffle the psychological condition of Venezuela."

Some TV networks, among them Televen and Venevision, did offer reports later in the day. But many locals said they turned to social media during the day to fill the void and remain informed. Officials at Televen and Venevision didn't return calls seeking comment.

Free-speech advocates say that the lack of news coverage demonstrates that privately owned media outlets, particularly the country's biggest TV networks, are being intimidated by the state. Restrictions on what can be covered, coupled with the recent purchases of once-critical news outlets by buyers allied with the government, have resulted in coverage either friendly to Mr. Maduro or indifferent to his governing style, said Marianela Balbi, director of the Press and Society Institute of Venezuela, a press freedom group.

"We think that day was a point of no return for the press," said Ms. Balbi. "Quite simply what happened was that there was no information about the violence, no video images, no live coverage when this was happening in other cities, when people were being hurt, killed."

More.

Obama Consciously Engineering America's Decline

An essay at Commmentary (via Blazing Cat Fur).

And check out Megyn Kelly's interview last night with Rep. Buck McKeon, Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee:


Background at NYT, "Pentagon Plans to Shrink Army to Pre-World War II Level."

Phyllis 'Sally' Carter Killed by Rolling Car in Horrific Parking Garage Accident

What a tragedy.

I saw Instapundit's brief post, "A BIT OF ADVICE."

Glenn doesn't link it, but here's the story at Knoxville News, "Maryville woman identified in garage fatality caused by rolling car."

It happens. Last semester I completely forgot to put my van in park AND to set the brake. I don't know what I was thinking, but the department secretary ran over to my office to ask if I owned a Honda Odyssey. I said yes and she said "You better get out to the parking lot. Your van's rolling away."

Luckily it's a flat parking lot and the van just rolled back out from the parking stall and was blocking the drive. A colleague of mine said hello to me as I was walking in the building and she realized it was my van. She called the department. What a blessing.

Weird that, especially since I always set the parking brake, but it happens.

Be careful out there. And prayers for Mrs. Carter's family.

Behind the Turmoil in #Venezuela

From Mary O'Grady, at the Wall Street Journal (via Google):

The bloodshed in Caracas over the past 12 days brings to mind the 2009 Summit of the Americas in Port of Spain, where President Obama greeted Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez with a huge grin and a warm handshake. A couple of months later the State Department attempted to force Honduras to reinstall pro-Chávez president Manuel Zelaya, who had been deposed for violating the constitution.

Brows were knitted throughout the Americas. Why did the U.S. president favor the Venezuelan dictator, protégé of Fidel Castro, over Honduras, which still had a rule of law, press freedom and pluralism?

Fast forward to last Wednesday, after four peaceful student-protesters had been confirmed as having been killed by the government's armed minions. Mr. Obama took notice, pronouncing the brutality "unacceptable." That must have been comforting to hear amid the gun shots and pummeling on the streets of Caracas.

That same night the government of Nicolás Maduro —Chávez's handpicked successor—unleashed a wave of terror across the country. According to Venezuelan blogs and Twitter posts, the National Guard and police went on a tear, firing their weapons indiscriminately, beating civilians, raiding suspected student hide-outs, destroying private property and launching tear-gas canisters. Civilian militia on motor bikes added to the mayhem. The reports came from Valencia, Mérida, San Cristóbal, Maracaibo, Puerto Ordaz and elsewhere, as well as the capital.

Venezuela has promised 100,000 barrels of oil per day to Cuba, and in exchange Cuban intelligence runs the Venezuelan state security apparatus. The Cubans clearly are worried about losing the oil if their man in Caracas falls. Opposition leader Leopoldo López, who heads the Popular Will political party, spent several years building a network of young recruits around the country. Last week's unrest is a testament to that organization, and it is why the 42-year-old Mr. López is now behind bars.

In Ukraine, the European Union has pressured the government to reach a compromise with the opposition. Venezuelans are getting no such help from the neighbors. Only Colombia, Chile and Panama have objected to the crackdown. The rest of the hemisphere doesn't have even a passing interest in human rights when the violations come from the left. The Organization of American States is supposed to defend civil liberties, but since Chilean Socialist José Miguel Insulza took the OAS helm in 2005, it has earned a disgraceful record as a shill for Cuba.

Venezuelans seeking change face daunting odds. The crowds in the streets of Caracas in recent days have not been significantly bigger than in many prior-year protests, including 2002, when a march in Caracas almost unseated Chávez.

This time the repression has been fierce. Besides injuries and death, hundreds have been detained and it would not be surprising if many are given long sentences. Mr. Maduro needs scapegoats for the violence he unleashed. Iván Simonovis, the former head of the Caracas Metropolitan Police, has been a political prisoner since 2004. Chávez made him take the fall for the 17 people killed in the April 2002 uprising even though video evidence points to chavista snipers. Photos of the once-fit policeman, frail and gravely ill from the inhuman circumstances of his long incarceration, are chilling.

Another problem is the division within the opposition. The governor of the state of Miranda, Henrique Capriles, represented a broad coalition of anti-chavista parties when he ran for president in 2013. But when he conceded to Mr. Maduro amid strong evidence that the election had been stolen, Mr. López and other members of the opposition broke with Capriles supporters.

Students have also been hamstrung by a communications blockade. The government controls all Venezuelan television and radio airwaves. When the violence broke out, it forced satellite providers to drop the Colombian NTN channel. Internet service has been cut in many places.

Getting the very poor on board for a regime change is a challenge. Some still see chavismo as their government, even if they have no love for Mr. Maduro and suffer from high inflation. Others don't dare speak out, for fear of losing state jobs or their lives. The barrios are terrorized by the chavista militia...

More.

Ukraine Seeks Arrest of Ousted Leader Yanukovych

At WSJ, "Ukraine Issues Arrest Warrant for Ousted President Yanukovych: Acting Government to Open Criminal Case Into 'Mass Murder' of Civilians":

BALAKLAVA, Ukraine—Ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was on the run Monday from a new government, which issued an arrest warrant for him on allegations of ordering the "mass murder" of protesters on the streets of Kiev last week.

Opposition parties—who over the weekend gained control of parliament and voted to dismiss Mr. Yanukovych—now want the toppled leader held accountable for deadly clashes in Kiev that left more than 80 protesters and police dead. Ukraine's acting interior minister, Arsen Avakov, used his Facebook page Monday to deem Mr. Yanukovych an officially wanted man.

"As of this morning, a criminal case has been opened based on the mass murder of civilians," Mr. Avakov wrote in his post. "Yanukovych and some other officials have been put on the wanted persons list."

The transformation of Mr. Yanukovych from the country's elected leader to a hounded runaway has been stunning in its speed. Within four days, he has gone from an embattled Ukrainian leader negotiating with foreign diplomats to a full-fledged man on the run, the subject of swirling rumors about fanciful escape attempts via helicopter, private jet and boat.

The 63-year-old deposed president dropped out of sight after he was last publicly seen Saturday in a video, in which he denounced his removal from power as a coup and declared himself Ukraine's legitimately elected president.

Amid the hunt for the ousted leader, opposition protesters fresh from their experience in a veritable war zone on the streets of Kiev have been thrust into the task of putting together a government in the wake of Mr. Yanukovych's departure.

More.

Spanish Leftist Alba González Camacho Convicted for Threatening Political Leaders on Twitter

Well, if she was a Nazi you'd never hear the end of this.

At the New York Times, "In a First for Spain, a Woman Is Convicted of Inciting Terror Over Twitter":

 

MADRID — The line between youthful rebelliousness and something more dangerous is not always clear. But in her angry musings on Twitter, Alba González Camacho, 21, who describes herself as a “very normal girl,” sailed across it. After she posted messages calling for a far-left terrorist organization to return to arms and kill politicians, Spain’s national court convicted her of inciting terrorism using a social media network.

It was the first verdict of its kind involving Twitter posts in Spain, and the case has touched on issues of where precisely the cultural, political and legal red lines lie in a country that not long ago lived under both the grip of Fascist dictatorship and the threat of leftist terrorism.

The case is also one of a recent handful that have pushed social media into courtrooms worldwide and raised issues of the limits of speech in the ether of the Internet. In January, two people received prison sentences in Britain for posting threatening messages against a feminist campaigner. The same month, a federal judge in the United States sentenced a man to 16 months in prison for threatening on Twitter to kill President Obama.

Ms. González Camacho, a student in southern Spain, says she is unaffiliated with any political organization. But she had invoked a group known as the Grapo, which killed more than 80 people, mostly in the late 1970s and 1980s, when Spain was returning to democracy after the lengthy Franco dictatorship. Although the Grapo never officially disbanded, security officials here consider it to have long lost its operative capability.

The group’s dormancy did not matter to the judge, who accepted the prosecution’s argument, which said that Ms. González Camacho had posted “messages with an ideological content that was highly radicalized and violent,” violating an article in the Spanish Constitution that prohibits any apology for or glorification of terrorism.

One of the messages called for the murder of the conservative prime minister, Mariano Rajoy. “I promise to tattoo myself with the face of the person who shoots Rajoy in the neck,” she wrote. Another singled out Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón, the justice minister, comparing him to a Nazi.

Eduardo Serra, a former Spanish defense minister, said that while far-left groups like the Grapo no longer presented any threat to Spanish society, “Terrorism is terrorism, and it just can’t be glorified.”

With no past criminal record, Ms. González Camacho was sentenced to one year in prison but will avoid jail time under a plea bargain.

She is studying to become a social worker in Jaén, in southern Spain, and declined to be interviewed, saying the case had brought her and her family enough trouble. But in an email exchange, she said that the intention of her Twitter posts was to fight “a system in which a minority lives on the back of the death, misery and exploitation of a majority,” in a country where the euro crisis has sown widespread economic despair.

“The truth is that I’m a very normal girl, who has never landed herself in any kind of problem,” Ms. González Camacho said by email. “But if I tell you everything that I’m fed up with, I would never stop.”

“I never imagined something like that could happen to me because you find a lot of nonsense on the Internet, including worse than mine,” she wrote about her conviction. “But it seems that here that the prosecution is only for those from one side — the Fascists can say whatever they want, and nothing will ever happen to them.”

Oh yeah, she's "very normal." No doubt millions of 21-year-old European sweeties would love to tattoo leftist revolutionary murderers on their faces.

But hey, crickets. She'll spend not a day in jail for her terrorist escapades. It's all just stuff on the Internet, ha!