The Good Russian: Jana Bakunina

 

Aging depletes many of life's pleasures, as the sensory pleasures decline with cranial nerves (hearing, vision, smell, taste), and muscle mass slackens, and blood flow to the nether regions south of the border narrows--gradually things slip away.

Jana Bakunina

But one new pleasure in aging is the capacity to relish surprise. Once you get into your seventh decade, you start seeing things again and again, and the delight or despair which titillate the younger generations is ho-hum to the septuagenarian--seen it all before, so what? 

The American government embarking on foolish, disastrous adventures, (Korea, Vietnam), scoundrels ascending to control of positions of power with resulting disruption and unrest (1953 and Joe McCarthy, 1968 and Nixon), stock markets crashing and the financial system teetering (1929, 1987, fill in the blanks). Been there. Done that. Wake me up when you've found something new under the sun. For the very young, everything is a surprise; for the simply callow, there are frequent surprises, but for the old, surprise is a real, piquant treat.

But, this morning, on his bike ride to North Beach, with his 21st century blue tooth ear plug plugged into his ear, connected to his new iphone,  streaming a podcast from Atlantic monthly, Mad Dog found himself surprised, astonished even, lucky he did not ride right over the sea wall into the Atlantic. 

They were interviewing Jana Bakunina, a Russian expat, living in London, who has written a book Mad Dog will download to Kindle--who bothers with print books in their cardboard bindings with fixed fonts and no back lights any more?--because what she told Mad Dog was totally unexpected.

After listening to podcasts from the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and even the New Yorker where the pundits were asked to expound on the terrible toll the war in Ukraine is having on the average long suffering Russian, Mad Dog learns the average long suffering Russian is not suffering at all, but is thriving, and very happy thank you.

Ms. Bakunina is stunned by the clean streets, the new buildings, the dazzling cities and suburbs and the bustling restaurants, the wealth, the cars, the clothes, the good looking people all having a wonderful time.

Who knew? 

Mad Dog thought the poor Russians were struggling with the war against Ukraine. Runaway inflation. A collapsing economy. 

Apparently, not.

From their perch inside Russia, her Russian friends and family seemed hardly aware of Ukraine. It was no more part of their lives or concern than the next summer Olympics.

She Thinks She's Ukrainian

Russia is a big place, and its vastness has protected it from fires burning in the rest of the world.

Whatever Does Not Kill You...

As Julia Ioffe has documented, in "Motherland," the Russians are a people who march to the beat of their own drums.

Mad Dog remembered his father's remark having returned from Spain in 1970, where the fascist dictator Franco was still in power, "They all looked so prosperous and happy in Spain! Don't they know they're living under a dictatorship?" And Mad Dog had a similar experience in Hungary in 2024: Budapest was a happening place, filled with young, joyful people cruising the Danube and partying hard. Nobody seemed to mind Victor Orban.

                   If she weren't Russian, She'd be Irish

Ms. Bakunina tells a tale which at once familiar and exotic to the American listener: Her father  loves Putin, and speaks of the forceful conquest of Crimea as "reunification," and her friends look around from their tables at the sumptuous restaurants and say, "We're doing great. Why worry about Ukraine?"

                                From Russia, No love

Ukraine hardly surfaces in the Russian consciousness, apart from an occasional recruitment poster advertising for new recruits to mercenary forces. 

Ukrainians are hunkering down for the loss of heating infrastructure owing to Russian bombardment; they've already adjusted to loss of electricity during many hours of the day. How long they can hold out is anyone's guess.

But nobody in Russian Ms. Bakunina found seemed any more  concerned about Ukraine than Americans are about those boats in the Caribbean which keep exploding because the American Navy keeps blowing them out of the water without warning. Who cares if a few fishermen are mistaken for narco traffickers? Our tough guys are blowing their bad guys to smithereens.

Churchill, of course, famously said, "I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma: But perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interests."

And why is it in the Russian national interest to subjugate Ukraine? Well, Vladimir Putin made no secret of it: He said the greatest disaster of the 20th century was the implosion of the Russian empire. Not World War II, mind you, because that came out fine in the end, despite 20 million dead. But the loss of all those subjugated states--that's what ate away at Putin. When Trump asked him why he invaded Ukraine, violated its borders, Putin reportedly replied, "Well, Ukraine isn't really a nation, you know. It's part of Russia."

Forebears

When She Was Good 

What other "nations" may be part of Russian--Hungary, Serbia, Slovakia, Poland, Georgia, Moldova, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, the former East Germany remains to be seen. 

Mother Russia

Mad Dog remembers a tennis match on TV his younger son made him watch. Maria Sharapova playing some young Eurasian woman, who was much more nimble, far quicker, displaying a variety of shots Sharapova could not match. Mad Dog never much liked watching tennis on TV, but his son insisted he stay to watch this match. "Wait," he told Mad Dog, "Just watch. Be patient, for once in your life." So Mad Dog, thus humbled and revealed, stayed put on the couch and watched Sharapova patiently, relentlessly, inelegantly grind her opponent down. No tricky shots. Nothing spinning, dropping, line hugging, just sheer power, as Sharapova--who looked like a plodding giant compared to her darting, balletic opponent on the other side of the net, a player who was far more skilled and dazzling--ground her down. 

Mad Dog was getting fidgety, angry, but never bored, because Sharapova was showing what Sharapova did best, just not giving up, not discouraged--she knew her size and remorseless tenacity would simply outlast her opponent, no matter how flashy or plucky or slashing that opponent may be.  

Let Napoleon or the Wehrmacht come. The Russian will outlast you. Or, as Khrushchev  once said, "We will bury you."

Those Democrats Always Cheat on Their Mortgage Applications

 

In Russia, if you displease Mr. Putin, you'd best stay away from windows, especially those on the third floor or higher. People who displease Mr. Putin have a way of falling out of those windows. 

Gold Galore: Eat Your Heart Out Donald

Can't explain it. They must not have screens or safety latches in Russia.

In America, if you displease Donald Trumpery, you will discover you have cheated on your mortgage application. The Department of Justice will somehow dispatch an investigator to check out your application, and--wouldn't you know it--you will find you misrepresented something.

And Mr. Trump should know about misrepresenting things on real estate forms--He was convicted of 39 instances of representing that properties he owned were worth gazillions, until it came time to declare their worth to taxing authorities, at which point he said they were worth next to nothing.

Really odd, how that works.

But now, the game is finding Democrats always cheat on their mortgage applications. Just ask Letitia Jones, who prosecuted Mr. Trump, or Congressman Eric Swalwell, who criticizes him, and was just notified the DOJ is investigating his mortgage application.

It's the sort of American version of window mishaps.

Better, perhaps as far as the victim is concerned--less lethal, but annoying nevertheless.

Tricky Dick Nixon liked to sick the IRS on foes to find some improprieties in those incomprehensible forms, but since Trump has never released his IRS documents, going after others about their returns seems like less fun.

But Trump knows real estate, or so he claims, and those mortgages are just quicksand.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, we've heard, is developing retroactive mortgage deceptivitis. 

She'd better be careful. Those windows in her house may be beckoning.

Now, here's a little ditty with which we might all serenade Ms. Green: (To the Tune of "Anything Goes")

In Donald's days, a little too much carping

Is looked upon as deadly mocking

And now, Gods knows

Anything goes!

Good Congress women who once spoke better words

Now dare to let fly verbal turds

And now, who knows?

Anything goes!

If criticizing her former hero

Gets him fiddling like Emperor Nero

We all know better than to oppose

Because...

Anything goes!

War Consigliere vs The Surrender Caucus: Where You Been, Bro?

 

It was no accident that Texas Representative Chip Roy became the spokesman for the Defund Obamacare Republicans in the Congressional hearing yesterday. Roy fought to keep the government closed to force the Democrats to cave and defund Obamacare when the Democrats were in power. He was scathing in his criticism of fellow Republicans who caved in and voted to fund it, so the government could re-open. He called them the "surrender caucus" in 2013. 

Now, Roy finds himself on the winning side, watching the surrender caucus of Senate Democrats cave in, while moving on the House side to drive the dagger in the heart of Obamacare.

Roy is cunning enough to frame Obamacare as:

1/ A scheme to enrich insurance companies--a good villain to pick in these times

2/ A program which limits the choice of doctors and hospitals so the government dictates which doctor you can and cannot see.

Of course, Obamacare was criticized at the time of its passage as a scheme to enrich commercial insurance companies. The Democrats wanted, and tried, to pass Medicare for All but ran into a brick wall constructed by Republicans who called it socialized medicine and, of course, lobbyists for the insurance companies were all over Congress and so, as happens in democracies, a compromise was struck handing insurance companies the business, but at least insuring that ordinary folks could buy insurance, no matter what "pre-existing conditions" they had. 

In fact, if Representative Roy had not been in Congress when he got his Hodgkins lymphoma and then applied for insurance he would have been denied coverage for his pre-existing condition. But what he complains about is that Obamacare would not have covered his care at MD Anderson, which is not really the fault of Obamacare, but of MD Anderson's business model.

It is also particularly rich to hear Roy inveigh about the Democrats holding the country hostage to Obamacare for 45 days, when he did precisely that to deny the country Obamacare back in 2013, and when his party caved, he called them "the surrender caucus."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPUJOpB2_Qg&t=1546s

Across from him, Hakeem Jeffries rises to attack the Republican assault on Obamacare, and he  confronts Roy for having tried to kill Obamacare 70 times, and for having fled Capitol Hill for 7 weeks rather than engaging in any kind of debate. 

"He couldn't see fit to ask us a single question, to engage in a debate. Where you been, bro? You don't have the time to have a back and forth? You want to repeal and displace tens of millions of people. That's the Republican plan. What I don't understand why my colleague (Roy) cut and run. The absence of any plan to make life better for every day Americans. Republicans literally stole food from children, mothers and veterans, and all of that was literally done to enact massive tax breaks for billionaire donors. And as if that wasn't bad enough, they skyrocketed the debt by trillions of dollars a year. So we are not going to be lectured about fiscal responsibility by you when you did that because Donald Trump ordered you to do that."

All this brought to mind the difference between a war consigliere and a consigliere who counsels accommodation, surrender and moderation. 

Sometimes fiction can instruct us on real life; it can provide a reference story we can refer to, just as many find Bible stories allegories to help them with the troubles they face in daily life. 

For Mad Dog, one such story is the movie, "The Godfather." When Tom Hagen, the Corleones' consiglieri, assesses the family's position after the attempted assassination of the Don, he advises accommodation or some might say, surrender, because it makes business sense. It's cheaper than a war, and it means everyone can make money. 

Michael decides to reject that advice and chooses to assassinate the would be assassin who had already missed his chance. And later, when the Corleone family decides to go to war, he excludes Tom, who is stunned and asks, "Michael, why am I out?"

"You're a good consigliere, Tom. And I love you, but you're not a war consigliere and you're out."

There are times when you need to follow your gut, or, to put it another way, to do what is emotionally and possibly morally the required decision. 

Winston Churchill, whose bulldog visage is at Donald Trump's elbow in the Oval Office, took the war consigliere position. Churchill's  predecessor had conciliated Hitler, had appeased him. Not Churchill. "We shall fight them on the beaches. We shall fight them on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields and in the streets. And we shall fight them in the hills. We shall never surrender."

Now that is the sort of leader Democrats need today.

Raping The Girl On 5th Avenue

 

It is a measure of desperation on the part of Democrats they continue to cleave to the idea there will be some one thing, one deux ex machina event which will bring Trump down and rid the Republic of this vexatious idol without the Democrats having to actually beat him in battle.

But it doesn't matter if Jeffrey Epstein sent an email saying Trump had sex with a "victim," at his house. It wouldn't matter if a video of Trump having sex with a fourteen year old girl surfaced. Or with a fourteen year old boy. Or having sex and then shooting them on 5th Avenue.

Trump is occasionally correct: He said he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and people would still elect him President. In fact, he wound up doing something very close to that: He exhorted his MAGA mob to attack the Capitol and then, after they did it, he can pardon those captured and nobody blinks an eye.

Any text message, email, video will be denied. Fake news. Deep fake. Black's white today. Good's bad today. Day's night today. 

His die hard MAGA fans will forgive him anything. He's an imperfect vessel doing God's work. Or he's just a man's man. He talks like us. Humble yourself before them and they will do anything you ask--Frank Underwood.

                         Behold, the Real Problem

This America, man.

CODA:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pay3qgmi8E8&t=145s

The Hollow Men: This Is The Way We End, Not With A Bang But with a Whimper

 It is not the intransigence and boldness of our adversaries we will remember, but the irresolute cowardice of our friends.

--Mad Dog

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

--Martin Luther King

Cowardice asks the question: Is it safe?

--Martin Luther King

A ship is safe in harbor, but that's not what ships are built for.

--W.G.Thayer Shedd

Even a dead fish can go with the flow

--Jim Hightower

The tyranny of some is possible only through the cowardice of others

--Jose Rizal

The unkindest cut of all

--Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang

But with a Whimper

--T.S. Eliot, "The Hollow Men"

The Ignominious Eight

The hardest part is not seeing our own two U.S. Senators bend the knee--Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen both voted to confirm Kristi Noem and they both voted to kill Dodd-Frank so that banks could profit over the common man. We have always accepted these two as useful but unreliable politicians.

John Fetterman has been a lost soul even before his stroke.

But Mad Dog expected better of Dick Durbin, Angus King and Thomas Kaine. These were men who attacked Trump boldly.

And now they vote to surrender.

Sometimes surrender is the right thing to do: The fanatics in the Japanese government, the die hards who wanted their fellow Japanese to fight on even after Japanese cities had been fired bombed and atomic bombed, even though the Japanese Navy was on the ocean bottom and the air force self destructing--those men were putting their own delusions ahead of their own people. (See "Embracing Defeat," John Dower.)

But our government shutdown was not Japan after the bomb.

It was beginning to hurt. It was beginning to become inconvenient. 

That's where you need courage.

There were two salient arguments for caving in to Trump and Thune and Michael Johnson:

1/ The people the shutdown hurt are mostly Democrats or people Democrats would like to keep in their fold: government workers, the poor, the hungry. Republicans do not consider these folks their constituents and are perfectly happy to see them suffer.

2/ The Democrats had no endgame: If the Republicans say, "Fine, we don't need no frigging guvment and we'll get paid for being Senators and Congressmen anyway and we can go home until the 2026 elections," then what do the Democrats have?

The answer to #1 is that we always hurt the ones we love, but we have to do that sometimes. Churchill did not say we'll fight them on the beaches thinking none of his constituents would be shot, and he did not inspect the bombed out London apartment buildings thinking his decisions had no part in that destruction. But he persevered because he knew what he was fighting for.

The answer to #2 is that neither side had an endgame, but the Republicans said, "We are willing to have no government," and the Democrats have to have the courage to say, "Fine, let's see how that plays out for you. We are willing to bet more Americans  will come to realize they need and even want a government than to not have one."

But what we did not know until these eight Democrats turned coward was whether we have strong enough leadership to justify having a Democratic party. 

And now we know.

CODA:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40kN6-yAbdA

Best Way to Fight ICE: Get Out Your Camera

J.B. Pritzker, Governor of Illinois knows what Donald Trump is trying to provoke: Another Kent State, a Border Patrol agent shot, an excuse to send in the troops. 

So far, in L.A., in Portland, Oregon, Trump has found his shock troops disarmed by giant green frogs and yellow ducks.

But the Border Patrol and ICE agents and Texas National Guard units sent to Chicago are ratcheting up the vice grip and trying hard to start something nasty. 

Governor Pritzker says the best counter punch is for citizens to take out their cameras and start filming every time ICE shows up.

Without that nauseating video, nobody would have ever heard of George Floyd, and Derek Chauvin would still be killing people in Minneapolis.

Without that famous photo of a napalmed naked Vietnamese girl running in horror from her bombed village, Americans would not have given Napalm a second thought. It smelled like victory, the man said, but with that image it looked like evil.

Without the images of My Lai, nobody would have paid much attention to what U.S. Marines were doing in Vietnam. Officials could claim they were only reacting to horrific behavior on the other side, to snipers or hidden threats. But those bodies of babies and their mothers exposed what was really happening.

The images of the Southern police beating protesters on the Pettus bridge in Selma turned stomachs even among some Southern women.

Martin Luther King being shoved to the ground by his neck meant more after you had heard him speak. But the photo played it's role.

The dog against protester photo was worth 10,000 headlines. Authorities could blame him. They could say he broke some law, that he put the officers at risk. But you can see what you can see.

So, let's get them on video. Let the world see what arresting the worst of the worst really means. Let us see the lie; don't tell us about it. 

An image can be powerful in ways words and even actions unrecorded cannot be.

CODA:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjCDDe-oh78&t=72s

Gerrymandering: A Primer

 

Listening to the media, print, social and TV, one might think an electoral map can be drawn up to assure that certain outcomes will obtain for a given party. 

So when the Texas governor assigns five new seats to the Republican party for the U.S. House of Representatives, it's a done deal.

And when Louisiana has 11 U.S. House seats and none of the elected Congressmen are Black, and yet 1/3 of the Louisiana population is Black, some have concluded district maps have been drawn to exclude Blacks from representation.

But how can you do that? Do Blacks not live side by side with Whites in Louisiana?

Apparently not.

The idea of manipulating maps, which reflect two dimensional geography to achieve an outcome in the composition of a Congressional delegation goes way back, to 1813 at least.

But how does that work now? 

Well, many states are "Pittsburgh and Philadelphia and Alabama in between," and for large stretches of land, the people living on that land have predictable opinions and political preferences.

So look at the state of Virginia's Red/Blue election map from the governor's election this week. Virginia gets 11 seats in the House. If you said, we'll divide up those Blue counties (Northern Virgina, Richmond, Delmarva, Albermarle, Montgomery) into different 10 Congressional districts and we'll make all those rural red counties one seat, then Virginia would send 10 Democratic Representatives to Congress and the Republicans would get only one. Currently, Virginia sends 6 Democrats and 5 Republicans to Congress. So the Republicans could lose 4 seats with the right redistricting. And repeat that in other similarly divided states and control of Congress depends on how you draw the lines, not on actual representation of opinion.

That's the big problem for a Republic. 

CODA:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVlpDV3D0DM