Sevastopol Spring shaping up nicely, and Barry is handling it every bit as well as we did the Prague Spring in 1968.

So, on Sunday, with 83 percent turnout (really?), more than 96 percent of residents of Crimea approved joining up with Russia. I'm sure that's rooted in fond memories of Soviet rule, brutal suppression and exile of the Crimean Tatars by Stalin and good stuff like that, and not by the thousands of Russian troops all over Crimea. Or fraud, maybe. So the result is expected.

Leading up to that referendum, Secretary of State John Kerry proved once again that he's a fucking idiot. He drew a red line and gave Russian President Vladimir Putin until Monday (um, yesterday) to back off on taking over the Crimea or else we were gonna get really mad and do something big.

Yeah, well, come Monday, Barry leveled some really evil sanctions:

The new executive order Obama signed Monday targeted seven Russian government officials — Vladislav Surkov, Sergey Glazyev, Leonid Slutsky, Andrei Klishas, Valentina Matviyenko, Dmitry Rogozin and Yelena Mizulina — and used an existing order to sanction four Ukrainians, including the country’s former president.
Four others are targeted under the executive order Obama issued earlier this month: Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and former chief of staff Viktor Medvedchuk, as well as Crimea separatist leaders Sergey Aksyonov and Vladimir Konstantinov.
Monday’s order authorizes Treasury Secretary Jack Lew to work with Secretary of State John Kerry to impose asset freezes and travel restrictions on “any individual or entity that operates in the Russian arms industry, and any designated individual or entity that acts on behalf of, or that provides material or other support to, any senior Russian government official,” the White House said in a statement.

That's great, I guess, if those guys bank in the U.S. or want to come here. Otherwise, that's a big nothingburger.

Which might explain why maybe not everybody views those sanctions as so tough, like Charles Krauthammer:

He’s being ridiculed by Russia, especially, because the statement and the policy are ridiculous. He doesn’t have a lot of cards, but he has some cards, and if he thinks that sanctioning seven Russians, out of a population of, what, 150 million, is a sanction, he’s living in a different world. The one thing that we could do is to respond to the Ukrainian request, when the president was here last week, they asked the Pentagon for weapons, and we said no, because somehow, to arm the victim of aggression is a provocation.

Or the Russians themselves. Such as the deputy prime minister of Russia, who tweeted, "Comrade @BarackObama, what should do those who have neither accounts nor property abroad? Or U didn't think about it?)." Or Putin himself, who announced sanctions of his own to mirror Obama's:

U.S. senators, congressmen and top Obama administration officials are sure to be on Vladimir Putin’s sanctions list; a response to the Obama Administration’s announcement on Monday that 7 Russian officials and 4 Ukrainian officials would be barred from holding assets or traveling to the United States.
Putin is expected to release his retaliation list as early as Tuesday and while the final list is still being crafted, it will include top Obama administration officials and high profile U.S. senators, in an effort to roughly mirror the U.S. sanctions against Russian officials and lawmakers, according to diplomatic sources. At the top of the list in Congress is Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, who recently co-authored a resolution criticizing Russia’s invasion of Crimea.

I'm sure Putin stands alone. It's not like anybody else in Russia is with him on this, right? Oops.

Russia’s deputy prime minister laughed off President Obama’s sanction against him today asking “Comrade @BarackObama” if “some prankster” came up with the list.

Oh no, the administration assures us, this is serious pressure:

The measures are “by far the most extensive sanctions imposed against Russia since the end of the Cold War,” an [Obama adminstration] official said.

Of course, they are the only sanctions leveled against Russia since the end of the Cold War, but hey, who's counting?

The U.S. is telling Putin the international diplomacy equivalent of "I'm gonna hold my breath until you get out of the Crimea," while Putin is telling the U.S. the international diplomacy equivalent of "Blow me." Who do you think wins that face-off?