Dispatches from Vilnius

Russians fleeing Kursk You might recall that when Putin took office way back in 2000, he let the Kursk submarine lie at the bottom of the Barents Sea well past the point that any chance of rescuing the 23 survivors of the explosion was lost.  Now, he finds himself in an interesting dilemma where a region by the same name is occupied by Ukraine and he is reluctant to provide the necessary military forces to regain it.  By doing so, he would sacrifice strategic gains he has made in the Donetsk region.   This was a bold move on the part of Ukraine.  Patience was wearing thin after they received the first installments of the $60+ billion military aid package from the US, along with F-16 jets and heavy artillery from NATO countries.  Ukraine needed to do something to justify these enormous expenses, and so they struck Russia's weakest point, its own border.  No one saw it coming, least of all Russia, which had minimal forces stationed in Kursk.   At first, the US and its NATO allies w

It seems Jon Stewart really regretted retiring from the Daily News early.  To think he missed out on Trump's previous two runs for president while he was busy pushing legislation on Capitol Hill that would help veterans suffering from Gulf War Syndrome and surviving first responders of 911.  Those were noble causes but apparently not enough for Jon, as he is back at The Daily Show offering us his weekly take on Indecision 2024 . I've tried to watch him but there is only so much of his smug persona that I can take.  I don't remember him being that smug before.  Maybe he was, but now it is insufferable.  Those long pauses after each punchline as if to say come on laugh, I know you can, and the audience duly responds.  He froze so long after one punchline that I thought he might be having a stroke.  He snapped out of it and reminded a member of his audience that he didn't have to pay to get in.  A good thing. There was a time I would have paid to see Jon Stewart but not an

That was quite a show at the United Center!  I haven't seen that much enthusiasm for a Democratic candidate since Barack Obama in 2008.  Even more as the stakes are much higher this time around.  We would have easily survived a McCain administration.  I'm not sure about another Trump administration, especially one with a blatantly autocratic agenda in Project 2025. I'm all in for Kamala and was very much impressed by her acceptance speech .  She covered all the bases and her delivery was pitch perfect.  Most importantly Democrats took back words like "freedom" and "opportunity," as they made their strongest pitch to working class voters that I have ever seen.  For decades, Republicans have been whittling away at the core of the Democratic vote, taking union states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin without offering anything in return.  Kamala offered a clear agenda that would restore child tax credits and other incentives to get more out of

Vancy was questioning the new polls on Fox News that show Kamala up by four points heading into the Convention.  He believes in all his heart that the polls are "wildly inaccurate" and that "we're going to win this race.  We just have to run through the finish line."  It's ironic since we were supposed to believe all those polls earlier that had Trump ahead before he embarked on a series of "press conferences" that have shown just how sadly out of touch he and the GOP are with reality. I suppose this comes from running a faith-based campaign, believing in this massive turnout of Evangelicals that will overturn the god-forsaken masses that still support the Democratic Party.  We have been told repeatedly how "evil" Democrats are.  Trump even going so far to say that they execute newborn babies in Democratic states.  He's also pushing the " End Times " if he is not elected.   This plays well to his faith-based audience, but

It's really hard to figure out what's the story with our tech billionaires.  In an interview with Bloomberg, Zuckerberg called Trump "badass" for raising his fist before being rushed off stage after the assassination attempt last month.  While Mark didn't endorse Trump, he made it clear he enjoyed his bravado.  Something apparently lacking in his own life despite all his jiu jitsu training. Peter Theil is a big fan of J.D. Vance but seems a bit worried the way the election is going and recently expressed his desire to leave the country .  He compared Californian liberalism to Saudi Arabian Wahabbism in a recent interview on the Joe Rogan Experience.  I typed "don't let the door hit you on the way out, Pete," in the comments section of Yahoo! news feed, but was rejected by their censor bot.  Not sure whether Yahoo's AI is run by liberals or Wahabbists.  Whatever the case, Pete has citizenship in New Zealand after spending a gob of money in the c

When I read Flea calling Macca the best rock bass player of all time I almost spit out my coffee.  He was sharing his thoughts on a podcast with Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson that was quickly picked up by social media.  The Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist isn't very articulate, resorting to "amazing" too many times, but he got the approval of Ted and Woody.   Flea grew up in the 70s, just like I did, and there were plenty of great bass players.  Bootsy Collins is the first name to come to my mind.  He laid down the rhythms for Parliament, Funkadelic and his own Bootsy's Rubber Band.  Some more greats ones from that era were Geddy Lee of Rush, Geezer Butler of Black Sabbath, and Donald "Duck" Dunn who moonlighted with The Blues Brothers.  I would think these guys all had more influence on Flea growing up than did Sir Macca.  But, no, Flea places the Beatles' bassist at the top of his pantheon, singling out his work on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club

It's pretty hard not to think about politics, even during the Olympics.  It seems to pervade everything these days.  I see that Imane Khelif is suing Elon Musk and J.K. Rowling, among others, for all the misinformation they stirred up on X.  She won the gold medal in her weight division, which only added to the cries of gender misrepresentation.  Lin Yu-ting also won a gold, but she hasn't received as much grief as Khelif.   Trump had a big sit down with Musk on X and naturally it came up, as did a wide range of topics.  Elon gave Donald plenty of space to ramble, which didn't turn out to be a very good thing as he continually tripped over himself.  The oddest part was his lisp, which of course he claimed was the result of faulty technology.  His biggest faux pas was praising Elon for all the layoffs at Tesla and his other tech companies.  He was supposed to be courting the Teamsters vote and naturally this didn't sit well with the labor union. Sat even worse with the

I wouldn't have given Breaking a look had not there been a Lithuanian girl in the mix.  She went by the name of Nicka, short for Dominika, and has gotten a lot of attention here.  It was fun seeing Snoop Dogg lead the contingent of b-girls out into the ring for the final elimination round, although he's an LA boy, not a NY boy, which is where break dancing originated back in the late 60s.  I thought it had been forgotten until Millennials and Zoomers picked it up and turned into an international "sport," making its first appearance in the Olympics. Sad to say the Americans were woefully presented in the early rounds by an Asian-American girl named Sunny, who kept getting in Nicka's face for no reason that I could see.  Nicka had to shield herself from one of Sunny's flying kicks at one point.  Maybe the badass American girl had confused breaking with capoeira?  It didn't matter, Nicka won her group and booked her place in the finals. They staged the event

Imaginary crowd sizes, imaginary helicopter rides and a neverending litany of complaints characterized Trump's impromptu  press conference .  It was like Bluto's " big speech " in Animal House when he tries to rally the boys after being put on double secret probation.  That scene pretty much sums up what Republicans feel right now after watching their presidential nominee thrash around on stage for a little more than hour. While he took questions, he pretty much avoided answering them as he resorted to his standard lines on pretty much everything.  He continues to question Harris' race and intelligence, which has become utterly cringeworthy given his attempts to conceal his aging appearance and cognitive decline.  When asked about the tremendous outpouring of support at Kamala's rallies, Trump played up his January 6 rally of all rallies, claiming he had more people than Martin Luther King Jr. at his infamous rally. One of the  more amusing anecdotes  was Dona

Imagine the horror of tuning into women's beach volleyball and seeing the American and Canadian women wearing leggings, not bikini bottoms for their preliminary match.  The buzz on social media was quick and fierce, "I waited four years for f**king pants!" One X viewer complained.  Another shot back, "And to all the creepers ... go away!"  Turns out the young women weren't making a statement like the Norwegian beach handball team did last Olympics.  They just felt more comfortable in leggings on a wet chilly day.  When the sun came out the next day, they were back in their traditional bikini bottoms much to the delight of creepy X fans. While no Olympics is without controversy, the Paris Games have had more than usual.  It all started with an opening ceremony where much of the viewing audience was greatly offended by what they interpreted as a gross transgender parody of the Last Supper.  Sacrilege, they cried!  The French Catholic church, among many other

For once the Democrats have thrown the Republicans off guard as they scramble to reframe the election after the emergence of Kamala Harris.  "Vancy" described it as a " sucker punch " and Trump is trying to squirm his way out of a debate as his campaign has a hard time coming up with a strategy to deal with "Ka-mala" as he derisively calls her.  Harris' response has been pitch perfect to date, stealing a phrase from Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota by repeatedly calling the Republican antics "weird," or in Vancy's case "weird and creepy." It turns out this "weird" campaign goes back at least as far as a Vanity Fair article when Eric Lutz labeled the emergence of Vivek Ramaswamy as "the rise of the weird, smug assholes."  Vivek wasn't happy then nor is he now, calling it juvenile name calling .  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was quick to fire back , "it's an incel platform, dude.  It's super weird a