Yesterday’s Benghazi hearing was a huge gift that the Republicans gave to Hillary. If voters had the time or the patience to watch the whole thing, she’d have the election in her pocket already. But even the highlights were great.

The part where Clinton was questioned about her companionship at night was simply priceless.

I just talked on Skype to friends from Argentina, and it’s shocking how similar things are in Russia and Argentina. Obviously, Argentina has no capacity to invade anybody or go bomb Syria (which is something of everybody’s favorite pastime these days), but Kirchner’s friendship with Putin is rubbing off and Argentina is gradually turning into as much of the continent’s joke as Venezuela.

My friends are saying that Argentina uses the same idiotic policies of “supporting the national manufacturers” that only lead to enormous corruption and force people to buy US goods at 200%-500% of the price. Corruption is out of control, the economy is in the toilet, elections are shamelessly falsified, and the people are zombified into supporting the madness by grandiose proclamations and a few crumbs from the table of the Kirchnerite oligarchy.

Just like we saw back in the times of the USSR, rot that originates in Russia is infecting the world.

The hetero (and non-hetero, but, let’s face it, mostly hetero) sex on offer to young women is not of very high quality, for reasons having to do with youthful ineptitude and tenderness of hearts, sure, but also the fact that the game remains rigged.

Absolutely true but with one correction. Not just for women but for women and men. And one more important clarification: this is a very peculiarly American problem.

The article’s author should look at the issue she is examining through a cultural lens, not a gender one.

Ukrainians are trying to pass a judiciary reform law that will result in firing all of the country’s 9,000 judges. This is amazing news since the post-Soviet judiciary is incredibly corrupt. Every judiciary decision has a fixed price, and people simply buy verdicts. It has been very easy to jail anybody you don’t happen to like if you had enough money to cover the costs.

The goal now is to get rid of the entire corrupt system and bring in a new generation of judges who have not been infected by the corruption of the 1980s and 1990s or, at least, will not want to meet with the fate of their predecessors.

Today, Ukraine is doing what the FSU countries failed to do after 1991. After the collapse of the USSR, the Soviet system was preserved in every area of life. Today in Ukraine, the USSR might finally be ready to die.

I was interviewed by a French journalist about the US elections today. Great interview, good questions, but I am so losing my Russian-speaking immigrant community membership card after it comes out. Because I was very honest and did not mince words on the subject of my feelings about the community.

It’s good I visited the Russian restaurant in DC before the interview or I might be poisoned there for being such a traitor.

So how do you, folks, feel about the “no tipping and a fixed service charge added to the bill instead” system?

I’m opposed because I have no confidence that any part of that service charge will actually go to the servers. The point of the tipping system, as far as I understand, is to supplement the low wages of the servers. With the fixed service charge, all I know for sure is that I’m supplementing the income of the restorateur when neither the amount nor the quality of food has changed.

The Ukrainian city of Odessa now has the world’s first Darth Vader statue:

Not that the people of Odessa are such huge fans of Darth Vader, but the city wanted to get rid of its Lenin statue and a local sculptor suggested giving old grandpa Lenin a Darth Vader remake.

This is what the Lenin statue looked like before it was Darth Vaderized:

Odessa was always known for its goofy sense of humor.

Thanks to the invasion of Syria, Putin’s approval rating grew from 89,1% to 89,9%. This is not an enormous improvement but only because there isn’t much room left for the approval to grow.

So whenever you hear the next “Putin is acting from a position of weakness” and “the people of Russia are about to rebel because of the economic crisis”, remember: others are not a mirror image of you. They have a way of being that is all their own, and you will only be able to understand it after spending a lot of time learning about it.

I just realized something really weird. In the 17 years I spent on this continent, I never voted here. Ever. For somebody as interested in politics as I am, it’s pretty bizarre.

First, I didn’t have citizenship in Canada, so I couldn’t vote. Then I got citizenship but there was no election. Then I left and again wasn’t a citizen. Then I cane back but there was no election. Then I left and wasn’t a citizen.

The only elections I ever participated in were a couple of fake elections back in Ukraine in the 1990s. North American democracy, however, has slipped by me.

I now feel kind of deficient over this.