18 March—Sympathy is in order for Russia’s president for life Vladimir Putrid. After nobbling, murdering, or disappearing all his opposition in the weekend-long pseudo-election, he was nevertheless able to get only 87 percent of the vote. One wonders if the vote counters who didn’t give him the other 13 percent have themselves been disappeared.

Of course Putrid was heaped with congratulations from all the usual dictators, including Narendra Modi, India’s current autocratic prime minister, who called his country’s relationship with Russia “special and privileged.” Modi’s tongue must be so far up Putrid’s ass that it’s coming out the Russian’s mouth.

President Putrid himself boasted that democracy in Russia is more legitimate than in America, where, he gleefully observed, mail-in votes can be bought. In all honesty, while there may be questions about the relative legitimacy of the Russian and American versions of democracy, Comrade Putrid is right on the mark about mail-in votes being bought over here.

In fact, just the other day some new questions arose about improprieties (!) in Bridgeport’s re-do election last month: voters receiving absentee ballots despite not having requested them; voters having had help with executing ballots at home; voters reporting offers of cash for completed absentee ballots; and suspicious activity picked up by surveillance cameras at those absolutely stupid ballot drop boxes that serve no purpose other than encouraging voter fraud.

Well, it is Bridgeport, after all. But the Park City (because it has 35 public parks) isn’t alone in suspicious election irregularities which, in that city’s case, have allowed the re-election as mayor of Democrat Joe Ganim, a criminal convicted in 2003 of 16 federal counts who has not even been able to get his license to practice law restored. Not that he needs it, of course. (Incidentally, the counts included racketeering, extortion, bribery; mail fraud, filing a false tax return.)

Then there’s Waterbury, the Brass City (as it once was), which has had more than its fair share of crooked mayors and where dead people have been known to vote early and often. Republican Joe Santopietro was sentenced in 1992 to nine years in the slammer for corruption—kickbacks, bribes, all the usual stuff—that started right after he had been elected mayor in 1986. Joe served six years, got out, and in 2007 was arrested for corruption again; but this time the lucky criminal was given five years of probation. The surprising news is, in 2017 Joe couldn’t get himself elected as a Waterbury alderman.

The latest Waterbury mayor to be incarcerated is three-term Republican Phil Giordano, a former state representative and unsuccessful U.S. Senate candidate, who unseated the incumbent mayor in 1995. He’s still in federal prison, but not for corruption. Rather, Phil was sent up in 2004 for his predilection for children. Pending his continuing good behavior, he’ll be eligible for early release in 2032. He’s never admitted to the crimes he was convicted of, mind you, nor apologized.

Back, then, to Vladimir Putrid, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy observed yesterday that Putrid was “drunk with power and is doing everything to rule forever.”

Lord Action (John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton—1834-1902—who, even though he couldn’t get into Cambridge as a student because he was Catholic, later became its Regius Professor of Modern History) observed in 1887 that “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Vladimir Putrid isn’t the first tyrant to prove Acton’s point . . .