Time magazine men of the year: a collage

(Joseph Stalin, y"sh  — twice)


(Adolph Hitler, y"sh)


(Wow, that's an unflattering painting. Anyway: John F. Kennedy)


(Vladimir Putin — with some barrel distortion)


(Barack Obama)

And now... drum roll...


(Ben Bernanke, Mr. “We screwed up your economy, but it could’ve been much worse”)

By the way: that picture of Obama above? I always wondered what it reminded me of.



I rather prefer William Wallace’s haircut, though.

The barrage

I loved this part so much, I will devote a separate post to it. I actually did not know there is a monument to foolishness with initiative, but in fact there is. Of all places, in North Korea.

I think if Barack Obama asked, they would let him in as a special guest, to tour the country.

Tears of nostalgy

A joke by my rabbi:

A school inspector comes to a Soviet school in the 1930s and asks children:

— Little boy, what is your name?
— Vova.
— Who are your father and mother?
— My mother is the Motherland. My father is the Fatherland.
— What do you want to be when you grow up?
— A soldier to protect the Motherland and Fatherland.

Next child:

— Little girl, what is your name?
— Sveta.
— Who are your father and mother?
— My mother is the Motherland. My father is the Fatherland.
— What do you want to be when you grow up?
— A cook to make food for the the Motherland and Fatherland.

Then he comes to a little boy with Jewish features sitting in the corner:

— Little boy, what is your name?
— Yankel.
— Who are your father and mother?
— My mother is the Motherland. My father is the Fatherland.
— What do you want to be when you grow up?
— An orphan.

This video makes me a bit nostalgic. This stuff is in my past. If Democrats have their way, it may also be in my children’s future, chv”sh.



I have to say, Russia looked much nicer. At least it had some character. Culture. History. Currents boiling under the surface. A spark of its people’s soul not extinguished by idiots with initiative.

This just looks like a tin-soldier factory. Maybe I don’t get the Asian culture, just like my pianist friend doesn’t like their piano playing (“Great skills and mastery, no musicianship whatsoever,” he says). Perhaps we are both racist.



Sometimes there is an advantage of being an American.

We are in a hotel room. We were told it’s bugged. Not sure that whispering will help. Hello, hello! Hello! Come in. Come in, Tokyo.

And then, on the way back, you’re thinking: “This is the fourth largest army in the world, all along this border. And they have threatened the US with nukes, and Japan with nukes. How can they have nukes?! They don’t have electricity. They don’t have running water. They are a third-world country on the level of a turn-of-[20th]-century Britain, and they have nukes?!”

Keep watching.

TopGear on Communist cars

My favorite part — 12:38:

In Russia, you had to work hard on car factories, or you’d suddently discover how difficult it is to mine Siberian salt, while wearing a hat made from your wife’s head.

British Communists didn’t really bother with any of that. Mostly, in fact, they didn’t bother turning up to work at all. They’d simply make their way to factory’s gates, where they’d spend the rest of their day chatting.

See also 9:12 for British Communist car (“The nerve to call it ‘super’. I suppose you couldn’t just call it ‘Trotskyite crap’. Maybe that’s what TC stands for”).

More on UK liberals.

I wonder what American cars bailed out by Obama and the rest of Politburo will look like in a few years.

It’s also always amazing how, given a choice of two syllables in a Slavic word, an English speaker will always put a stress on the wrong one. It must be the English and American way of distinguishing themselves — after all, they can’t speak through their noses like French.

And, finally, how difficult is “Zaporozhetz” to pronounce? It’s not like we are forcing you to say “Dnieprodzerzhinsk”.


(full version)