Tragic circumstances

 Someone should bring out a set of Russian oligarch trading cards listing the cause of death.  Today's entry is the Sausage King of Vladimir, Pavel Antov, who apparently fell was pushed exited the window of a hotel in Rayagada, India.  Three days earlier his traveling companion Vladimir Budanov had died ("of a stroke") and the official story is that Antov was so depressed he killed himself.  Last June Antov described a bombing in Kyiv as "terror," a statement he later retracted.  Too late.

George Santos continues to explain himself in an interview with the New York Post, covering early misadventures and "embellishments" like passing stolen checks in Brazil.  "I never claimed to be Jewish.  I am Catholic.  Because I learned my maternal family had a Jewish background I said I was 'Jew-ish.'"  I doubt Santos has heard of the 1961 revue Beyond the Fringe, where Jonathan Miller had a slightly different take:

Not the whole hog.

The one bright spot about covid is, you can see it coming.  It started in China and China is still a good place to watch if you want to know the future.  China, where lockdowns recently provoked widespread demonstrations -- something hardly thought possible -- has stopped publishing daily covid figures because everyone knows the numbers are much higher than they like to admit.  I don't know what wave this is or what Greek letter has been assigned to it, but you can bet your last yuan it's coming this way.  That means more madness about masks, vaccines and previously unheard-of quack cures, just in time for the more squirrely members of what promises to be the loopiest Congress in decades to cook up fresh complaints about Anthony Fauci, his successor, the NIH, the AMA and every pharmaceutical company that broke records developing a vaccine.  Will be wild.

 Back in Asia, countries as baffled as we are while away the time and distract their people with assorted hijinks.  South Korea fired "warning shots" at the North after its drones crossed into their territory.  China taunted Taiwan with a display of 71 warplanes and seven ships.  In polyglot India Prime Minister Modi's nationalist government is angering a lot of people as it moves closer to declaring Hindi the sole national language.  And in Japan they're dealing with unusually heavy snow.

It's the time for those year-end articles about who died, who ceased to be as rich/important as before, who did goofy or glorious or dishonorable things.  The Guardian started the week by revisiting 2022's notable cheating scandals.  I knew about chess, Irish dance, poker and the weighted walleyes.  I did not know about cornhole (beanbag to you).  That we know about these indecencies -- and there are others -- means they didn't succeed.  Calvin Ridley placed a $1,500 bet on his team, the Atlanta Falcons, to win, and drew a season-long suspension which cost him $11 million.  One day Georgia Republicans will run him for the Senate.

And then there's Trump.  Trump is unhappy.  He wittily calls the omnibus spending bill an "OMINOUS bill" and suggests the Democrats have "something really big" on Mitch McConnell because he refused to stop it, again referring to his wife as "Coco Chow."   (He hasn't posted about "Kung Flu" or "Jina" lately and the racism was building up in his colon.)  Trump was displeased with the article that resulted from the interview he gave Olivia Nuzzi for New York Magazine.  She called him sad and lonely and he called her "a shaky & unattractive wack job...dumb as a rock" -- higher praise no writer could imagine.  He insists Ivanka and What's His Name did not decline to join his "campaign"; it was he who "FIRED THEM BEFORE THEY COULD BEG TO HELP...FOR THEIR OWN GOOD."  Politics is too nasty for such innocents.  Now he can eat with Nazis and not worry about what that side of the family thinks.  Oh, and this is priceless:  The story of the isolated and unloved old man dying alone in his Florida retreat finally made Citizen Kane unbearable, despite its inspired response to electoral loss ("KANE ELECTED GOVERNOR" vs "FRAUD AT POLLS!").  Now his favorite movie is Sunset Boulevard.  He's still big, it's the country that got small.  

Olivia Nuzzi's article is here.  Read it before you pity him based on that photograph.