*I'm having no trouble believing this. Russian life is a pageant of tragedy.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,817138,00.html
*So, okay, if Putin is so isolated, where are the wife and the children? They are the ones who knew him when, so they ought to be his moral support. Of course, that was before this strange Berlusconi-style business when the Putin's United Russia started methodically promoting nubile young female loyalists into positions of state power. Anna Chapman, Alina Kabayeva, the "Putin's Army" of campaign strippers... I wouldn't pretend to know the whole story there, but there's something strange and morally desiccated going on there behind that facade of raunchiness.
