Great Men

The Allegheny County Health Department has issued a consumer alert for the Urban Tap on South Highland Avenue in East Liberty after an active infestation of rodents was discovered. Seven dead rats in the kitchen. Is it better or worse that they're dead?


Great Men

The Wagner Group in the Russian Army has publicly questioned Russian military policy and has withdrawn from Ukraine. The head of the unit, perhaps the nation's largest military group in the Russian army, was a hot dog vendor in his previous life. (He also spent a lot of time in prison.) He is now threatening to take his military objections to Moscow, 300 miles away. Putin, in true capo fashion, threatens retaliation but seems more powerful against unarmed civilians or as a poisoner, one on one.

His opponent in Ukraine is a former standup comedian. He managed to mobilize an astonishing successful resistance to a nuclear power and is on the edge of counterattacking into Russia itself.

The watchful West is led by an elderly man who is clearly impaired and, in any other social situation, would be in a care facility. His major domestic political opponent is in the WWF Hall of Fame.

This leads to many questions, like how does this kind of disorder happen? How do such leaders become leaders? It was bad enough when the hereditary-king-ordained-by-God could sweep through your town and dragoon you into a war over his girlfriend or his territorial ambitions, wars named in decades or, sometimes, centuries. But now these self-obsessed leaders have nuclear weapons, species-ending weapons.

Who are these people who threaten us, who make these decisions for us? And why do we assume that their idiots are smarter and better motivated than ours?