The Russian TV program I mentioned in the previous post is dedicated to the horrifying video of a woman being beaten into a coma and then slashed on her face with a knife by a man. 

A male witness is filmed walking calmly by as the criminal brutalizes the woman. 

People in the audience are horrified. “You men! You just walk by when women are being brutalized! And you brutalize women, too!” an angry woman says. “Why don’t you just say once and for all that you are not men! You are women! Women, that’s what you are!”

14,000 women are killed as a result of domestic violence every year in Russia. According to the most conservative reports, one out of every two Russian women has been a victim of rape. Yet the biggest insult a woman can come up for a woman-beating man is that he is. . . a woman.

Mind you, Russian men haven’t been working, providing or producing anything worth a crap for generations. When N told me his Dad had a job back in the 1990s, my reaction was, “Wow, seriously? How come? That’s just so bizarre.” [Mine had a job, too, but mine is a Jew.] Yet the Russian women who are, en masse, sole providers for their families keep fawning over these useless pieces of junk. It’s a mystery.

A newscaster on a Russian TV channel announces, “The victim of this crime was a young girl of 34 years of age.” In Russia, where any woman past the age of 24 is considered an ancient old reject (and this idea is being delivered day and night on every channel), “a young girl of 34” is an enormous progress.

This is so that people don’t tell me I only write bad things about Russia.

There is an old fable about 3 sisters of marriageable age. The eldest was lazy and never did any work, just stayed lazing around in bed. The middle sister was gloomy and moody. And the youngest sister was beautiful, hard-working, and always smiley and good-natured.

Once a fairy godmother came to see the sisters and told them she had the perfect husband for each of them. The sisters got on to a cart and it rolled into the neighboring village.

“Here is your husband,” said the fairy godmother to the lazy sister, pointing to the most hard-working fellow in the area. “You are each other’s perfect match.”

In the next village, she turned to the gloomy sister and pointed to the most good-natured, out-going, joyous guy there. “This is your husband,” she said. “You compliment each other perfectly.”

Finally, they got to the village where the youngest sister’s match lived.

“And here is your perfect match,” said the godmother, pointing to an ugly, miserable little drunk lying in a ditch.

Moral of the story: People who feel that they need to be perfect all the time end up with very flawed partners because they need the partners to compensate for their uprightness with some looseness. Your partner will always (although not consciously) try to become what you lack. So don’t try to be too perfect. It doesn’t pay off.

Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said on Thursday Russia would consider extending financial aid to debt-strapped Greece if Athens were to make a request.

This is really good. This is the only thing that can sour the Russians on Putin. They hate it when anybody gets handouts. Anybody but them,  that is. Let Putin keep handing out cash to every freeloader on the planet. And let’s see Russians finally awaken from their crush on Putin.

I’m hearing that the supporters of Spain ‘ s new party Podemos have been celebrating the election of Syriza. I’m really hoping Podemos doesn’t decide to become one of Putin ‘ s ass-lickers. Spain really deserves better than that even if Greece doesn’t. And Spain’s economy is improving.

Obama said in his recent interview that he doesn’t believe Putin ‘ s annexation of the Crimea was part of any grand strategy.

Of course, he doesn’t believe anything of the kind but is forced to say it to give Putin a chance to step back.

But Putin can’t step back because the overwhelming majority of people in Russia passionately wants the war to continue. The bodies of the Russian  soldiers killed in Ukraine are shipped back to Russia by the hundred and buried, nameless, under the plaques saying “Surgical Waste.” And not a single spouse, parent or sibling has asked for a chance at least to have a grave to visit. It’s OK with them that their loved ones should be discarded as “surgical waste” as long as Ukrainians get killed. There is nothing Obama or anybody else can oppose to this.