Argentina is probably now better governed than America

And if Trump wins (somehow), then it won't be particularly close.

Riber, decime que se siente
haber jugado en Nacional

Vamos!

It's always an appropriate time to post this.

River Plate lost today to Racing, meaning that now River does not control their own destiny.

Meanwhile, el Superclasico Sudamericana is on Thursday, where River and Boca Juniors face off in el Monumental (River's home) in the second leg.  You'd think that would be advantage River, however Boca will advance to the finals in the case of tie.  Unless the game is scoreless, in which case penalties will be taken.

In part, River lost today because they played all of their substitutes while resting starters for the Boca game.

Reminds me of the spring (autumn in Argentina) 2012 season for Boca.  In 1st place for most of the Clausura, making a deep run to the finals of the Copa Libertadores, and also going to the finals of the Copa Argentina.

Of course, we lost both finals, and played our subs too many times in the domestic tournament, so we lost that too.  Despite obviously having the best team, no championships won.

WashPo says Argentina is a bad place to be an expat.

the Kirchners ruin everything.

If necessary, use words.

The non-Catholic pastor who married us is headed off to the Vatican to see the Pope.

Pope Francesco (Francis in English?) acquitting himself well so far.   His actions remind you of Francis de Azizzi.   El Papa es Argentina, papa!

25 de Mayo -- Independence Day, Revolution Day

It is impressive on this Independence day (there are two here), the Argentine federal government is spending lots of money on online Google and YouTube ads.  Presumably they get charged at the official exchange rate, meaning they are twice as expensive.

The ads from the government are always the same. They look cheap, with text on the screen as a voice narrates.  Basically like a PowerPoint slide. 

All this on a day when Google announced, "Google Play will no longer be able to accept payments on behalf of developers registered in Argentina starting June 27, 2013."  Google even suggests that developers move their account to another country.

Unfortunately the same old story for Argentina: a corrupt leftist government screwing things up.

The Kirchners, corruption, jail...

Journalist Jorge Lanata has been hitting the Kirchners pretty hard recently.   Everyone expects Argentine politicians to be corrupt  - it is just the sad history of the country -- but it looks like it is even worse than people thought.

For my part, I have long thought the Kirchners were super-corrupt.  I think I wrote about it here at the time, but during the financial crisis, the Kirchners net worth DOUBLED.  The whole world lost half of their asset values, but the Kirchners doubled their net worth (and not by shorting).  

And that is just what they reported on their official forms.  The tough part of stealing money as a politician here is the laundering.  Just think about that for a second.

One of the main Kirchner cronies Lazaro Baez just invited reporters into his home to show them how he had a large wine cellar in place of where Lanata had recently reported that he installed a bank vault to hide all his yet-to-be-laundered cash.   It all went according to plan until...

...the worker who Lazaro Baez hired took pictures of himself taking out the bank vault and sent them to reporters.    Pretty smart move by the worker, because otherwise there would have been an incentive for him to suffer a mysterious accident (eg how Baez originally earned his money).

It is enough to make you wish the Kirchners went back to just sticking the Argentine IRS on their opponents.