Dispatches from Vilnius

The crazy twists and turns continue with Polish President Duda caught visiting Trump in his golden tower on Wednesday in New York.  They apparently sat for a two-and-a-half hour dinner, after which Statesman Don boasted of how much he gave Poland during his four years.  This follows closely on the heels of an endorsement from Lettuce-head Lizz Truss, the former PM of Lesser Britain.   Liz doesn't matter much, but Duda is still head of state even if his political party suffered badly in the parliamentary elections and he now finds himself essentially rendered moot, as most of the power in Poland is vested in the parliament.  The White House is choosing not to react, which is probably the best course.  Otherwise, Biden would just be feeding into Trump's enormous ego. I'm sure the endorsement and visit were arranged by billionaire backers anxious to give Trump the illusion of still being a major player, even if he knows nothing of what is going on in the world.  It's not

In this topsy-turvy world, the women's basketball tournament is drawing a much bigger audience than the men's basketball tournament, largely thanks to the incredible appeal of Caitlin Clark.  Her rematch with Angel Reese in the regional finals drew the largest ESPN television audience for any game, men's or women's.  That was until she squared off against Paige Bueckers in the semi-final game against UConn.  More than 14 million viewers tuned in, peaking at 17 million viewers.  Even the mighty LeBron was watching the game, only to complain about the call on a moving pick that sent Iowa to the Finals against South Carolina today, which no doubt will draw an even bigger audience. Despite all this attention, alpha males continue to voice their grievances.  No longer able to claim that "girls" don't bring in the revenue, they fall back on how they could never compete against NBA players.  Luka Doncic threw a bit of cold water on this argument by saying Caitli

A nasty encounter in the city had us once again assessing our house, or more specifically our basement, as to what we should do in case of an invasion.  Russians are numerous in Vilnius and not all of them are friendly.  Daina found that out yesterday when she was cut off at a parking meter by a burly Russian man who wanted to pay for his Land Rover.  As he fumbled with the settings to find the Russian language, Daina asked in Russian if he had left his manners in Moscow.  He turned on her with fiery eyes and asked if she had any education.  She quickly saw it pointless to argue with him and took a few steps back and waited as he muttered in Russian while setting the time for his expensive SUV.  The look in his eyes, she told me later, said it all.  He acted like he owned Vilnius. Russians pretty much laid low the first year in the city.  No one knew how the war in Ukraine would turn out.  In September of 2022 it looked like Ukrainian forces would push Russian forces into the Azov Sea,

It seems so old it is almost hard to place Seinfeld in the contemporary world.  This was a television series that began before the Soviet Union collapsed and in its own cynical way noted some of the diaspora in New York such as a Serbian "tennis pro" who sells Jerry a very expensive racket , only for Jerry to find out the Serbian can't play tennis at all, and almost ends up sleeping with his wife because the Serbian is so desperate not to have Jerry tell anyone that he pimps out his own wife.  We find out about "Latvian Orthodoxism" in another episode where George decides to convert to be closer to a Latvian girl, and Kramer almost gets a nun to give up her vows because of his "kavorka," or lure of the animal .  I hadn't watched these episodes in years, decades even, but thanks to Netflix, which has become the new "Nick at Nite," I could watch Seinfeld in its entirety from 1989-98. Now I can rest easy having finally finished Seinfeld.  I

It brought a smile to my face seeing one of my religious conservative friends question Trump's latest venture.  He simply stated, "A politician selling Bibles is very disturbing on many levels." As my friend further elaborated in his comments, "it's wrong for anyone to manipulate people for money by using their faith," especially one that has such a xenophobic message as "God Bless the USA" stamped on the cheap leather cover.   Most of us had a Bible given to us in our youth.  I still have the black King James Bible my mother gave to me when I started Sunday School.  Of course some of us preferred simplified texts like the New American Standard edition so that we don't have to wrestle with all that Olde English, but my mother didn't feel the language had to be diluted and sat with me to help decipher the anachronistic text.  I never did read the Bible from front to back but I have read large sections of it, including all of the Books of Mos

For the past two weeks I got an inordinate number of hits from Hong Kong.  They seem to be trailing off now.  No idea why as whoever or whatever it is generating these hits wasn't looking at any posts.  When I get hits from Singapore, which also seems a bit suspect, I see a number of corresponding hits on my posts.  Maybe this is a legacy of the time my cousin taught at the American International School in Singapore?  Blogger doesn't provide much in the way of analytics and I really don't want to spend time dissecting this.  At least it is not coming from Russia or some Central Asian country, which had been the case a few years ago. This blog has morphed over the years.  It went from an American history reading group in the wake of the collapse the NY Times reading groups, around 2010, to what is now a personal blog.  The only person that still hangs around from that time is Trippler.  The others have either moved on or passed away, like Chartres and Robert Whelan.  We had

I imagine there will be a mad scramble going on in Mar-a-Lago this weekend as Trump tries to come up with half a billion dollars to post bond on his fraud appeal in New York.  Turns out the faux billionaire doesn't have that kind of cash on hand and is now banking on his Truth Social Network to bail him out.  There's been  all kinds of chatter that if he takes TSN public, he stands to net billions but this is just another one of Trump's many chimeras.  It is very doubtful his social network company will be valued in the billions when it has only generated $5 million in revenue over the last three years, but in a digital world built on chimeras, who knows?  I'm not sure Judge Engoron is going to buy it though. Playing with the idea of being a billionaire has been Trump's calling card for decades but he owns very few if any of his properties outright and would have to pay off the mortgages first before collecting any cash of his own.  This could potentially bankrupt

You have to hand it to the artless dodger.  Trump managed to get an insurance company to put up a bond for the 83 million he owes E. Jean Carroll in a defamation settlement so that he can appeal the decision.  Now for someone to come up with the 435 million he owes New York in the fraud settlement.  He already has been trying to move assets out of the state so that New York officials can't seize them but Trump Tower is pretty hard to move.   Meanwhile, the list of infamous persons who feel that Trump has been wronged grew this week to include conspiracy theory emeritus Oliver Stone .  It's rather ironic as just four short years ago, Stone described Trump as a " mad King Lear ," noting that there is something "vastly wrong with his ego."  Sounds like a movie is starting to swirl around in Stone's addled mind. The list of distractions doesn't stop there.  RFK Jr. announced to the world that he will be presenting his Vice-Presidential nominee on March

I nearly spit my coffee on my laptop when I read Musk was suing OpenAI for abandoning its original mission of using artificial intelligence to benefit humanity and now churning out ChatGPT in the name of profit.  At the same time, he jumped all over MacKenzie Bezos for "virtue signaling" in that she has given so much of her divorce settlement to charity.  He thinks independent rich women will destroy Western civilization as we know it.  What's with this guy? Kara Swisher is supposed to elucidate us on the inner workings of Elon's addled mind and those of other Silicon Valley tech barons in her new Burn Book .  She apparently admired most of these guys at one time but has since become repulsed by them in their search for virtual Valhalla.  Seems like every week you learn about some new drug Musk has dipped into on Joe Rogan or some other chat show.  There's a story that he got all the Tesla board members high before getting them to agree on a $55 billion pay pac

So Trump stays on the ballot in Colorado.  Not that it really matters as the only primary he has lost so far is DC, which in his addled mind he lost on purpose .  More interesting is that Nikki Haley withdrew her pledge to support the Republican nominee, leaving pundits to speculate what that means.  Will she run as an independent if she loses the nomination and try to pull of the "Murkowski maneuver?"  If you aren't familiar with this rare fete, I will elucidate you.   In 2010, Lisa Murkowski, the incumbent Republican senator from Alaska, found herself "teabagged" in the primaries.  She had run afoul of the movement that sprung up in the wake of John McCain's 2008 loss.  Sarah Palin became the de-facto leader of the Tea Party after that failed bid, or "Mama Grizzly" as she liked to be called.  She and Lisa hated each other.  The animosity stemmed from Sarah's rather limited understanding of what it meant to be governor of Alaska. Sarah pushed