Just 32 percent of Americans reported having more take-home pay due to the cuts, including just 35 percent of middle-class respondents and 48 percent of Trump supporters. More than half saw no change.

Oh, sweet Lord in heaven. This depends on how one’s withdrawals are set up. Those who see a salary increase now will get a smaller tax return next April. Those who are seeing no increase will get a larger lump return. Which is a great thing for them because a lump sum to spend registers more and can buy more than a smaller regular increase in the same amount.

The speaker of the Russian parliament said that it’s a responsibility of everybody in Russia to support the oligarch who’ve been hit with US sanctions. This means more taxes and more privations for everybody to make sure that these billionaires don’t see even a minimal reduction to their well-being.

What’s really interesting is that there haven’t been any xenophobic comments by Russian people against these oligarchs who are very obviously not ethnically Russian. Nobody seems to have a problem feeling solidarity with them.

Of course, the victory over xenophobia has only been achieved in what concerns oligarchs. In the recent fire that killed many small children, quite a few folks in Russia advanced the idea that the kids had been killed by Jews as a sacrifice for Pesach.

Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska lost a cool billion on April 6 as a result of the US sanctions. Just like that, in a matter of hours,his company’s stock fell by over 15%. Oligarch Suleiman Kerimov lost $265,000,000. Oligarch Viktor Vekselberg lost $56,000,000.

I understand you don’t know these names and your life is richer for it. But I do. These are very very nasty characters, real bandits. Of course, this won’t change anything and they’ll still be mega rich. But it’s not unpleasant to observe this collapse. It’s the worst these evildoers ever experienced in their disgusting lives.

You know this feeling when you are so embarrassed for people that you curl your toes in vicarious shame? This post on Shakesville did it for me today. I understand that everybody wants to feel important but there’s a line that separates this normal human vanity from complete and utter delusion.

OK, why are we all of a sudden opposed to US’s complete withdrawal from Syria? I think it’s a great decision because no good is being done by staying. And the worry that it would please Putin is ridiculous. First of all, it won’t. And besides, why would you suddenly care about it?

I’m beyond puzzled by all my peacenik hippie generation colleagues ranting against the withdrawal from Syria because they are now all about the US “remaining a major player in the region.”

This is what I mean when I talk about people not being guided by principles in their politics. It’s like if Trump says that minimum wage should be raised to $20, they will begin to rant against the impact it will have on job creators.

Klara is trying to climb a really high and precarious piece of equipment in the park.

“No!” I say. “It’s too dangerous.”

“I not baby, mamma,” she counters calmly and with a great sense of dignity. “I a big girl.”

“Oh, ok then,” I say. “If you are a big girl then go ahead.”

Facebook could actually become a good shopping channel if the company finally hired some talent and stopped buggering around with useless features.

Right now, FB’s ad algorithms are so pathetic that it’s ridiculous. With all the information they have, it’s a crime against the gods of marketing to offer somebody like me T-shirts for men saying “My wife is a pain in the ass but she’s my pain in the ass” and bras for the very flat-chested with a slogan “finally there’s proof that an A cup can look sexy.” I’m sure there’s a flat-chested woman somewhere who’d be happy to see this ad but instead she’s staring at ads that feature bras one could use as a circus tent or to trap a whale and that I’d be buying in bulk the second I saw them.

My ideal Facebook is the one where I see friends’ birthdays and pictures of their kids plus tons of good shopping offers. Instead they offer me endless ads of precooked frozen soups, which is a product I consider to be an affront to my basic humanity.

And I’m supposed to believe that idiots whose algorithms are so bad they can’t figure out that a person who posts on behalf of United Feminists will not buy sexist T-shirts can sell me a political opinion I don’t already hold?

OK, just one more tiny Trollope quote and I’m off to sleep:

How terrible a thing it is to come on a journey unprovided with any book.

“Unprovided” is such a great way to put it.

And now a short quote from Trollope that pretty much sums up the essence of psychoanalysis (which obviously was unknown to the writer):

It is the grind that makes the happiness.

Or, to put it in a more clunky way, the best sign of psychological health is a capacity to derive enjoyment from the routine, daily stuff.

I have a feeling I’ll be reading a lot of Trollope this year, so this is a fair warning.

In the park, I touched Klara’s knees to see if she had gotten them wet while climbing on the equipment.

“Don’t take my knees, mamma!” she said indignantly. “You have your own knees. I have my own knees.”

It’s not easy for her to pronounce so she enunciates “your own knees” very carefully to make sure I get the message.

I swear to God I didn’t teach her the bit about “her own knees.”