The bark and the bite: random roundup

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili has gotten himself in some hot water over his use of an unusual celebrity masseuse. The NYT's news blog covers all angles, serious and less serious.

They include the use of the controversy by Saakashvili's plentiful opponents, both domestically and abroad - the video from the Russian government's mouthpiece Russia Today is a treat of sorts - but also the particulars of Dr. Dot's specialties and her outspoken blog.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi keeps puzzling and aggravating his colleagues abroad, Alexander Stille notes at TNR:

Only a few days after the "Meester Obama" episode, Berlusconi embarrassed German Chancellor Angela Merkel by emerging from his limousine for an official visit while talking on his cell phone as she waited on a red carpet to greet him. He turned his back on her and talked for several minutes as she stood there with her hand out, until, finally, with obvious annoyance, she gave up and went inside.

"What makes Silvio Berlusconi say the ridiculous things he says?," asks Stille, and provides a colourful yet concise introduction to Berlusconi the phenomenon, his personality and his place in Italian politics. Those who have followed Berlusconi's rise and dogged persistence as Italy's powerful prima donna won't find anything new, but it's a good read for anyone who could do with a refresher.

Commenter Teplukhin adds a good characterisation too: "Berlusconi was the first of our era's northern hemisphere oligarchs. He represents, in almost ideal type fashion, the haute 1990s fusion of state power and arbitraging of state assets and pseudo-free markets for personal economic gain that became the model for Russia under Yeltsin".

On a final, sad random note, these kids deserve hellfire. What a maddening story. Life has a way of doling out immeasurable suffering - and human beings have a way of then twisting the knife. For the sheer heck of it.

Many people have no idea how hard life is on a day-to-day basis when your head is messed up; and the callous cruelty with which people are willing to torpedo whatever fragile grip you have comes in endless manifestations. In this case, in the form of two kids in their early 20s shooting random neighbourhood dogs:

[Marcus Luttrell] is the lone SEAL team member to survive a June 2005 firefight with the Taliban in Afghanistan and was given a puppy  to help him heal after he returned from the war. He named it Dasy as an acronym for his SEAL team members lost in that battle.

Luttrell [..] heard a gunshot on the night of April 1, checked on his mom inside the house and then went outside where he saw Dasy. "I could tell she tried to get away because there was a blood trail," Luttrell said. "When I saw she was dead, the only thing that popped into my head was, 'I’ve got to take these guys out.'" [..]

In his phone interview, Luttrell said he had left his Huntsville home and was in "the middle of nowhere." He added that Dasy's killing was a huge setback in his life. "I was trying to talk myself out of being who I am," he told the Chronicle. "Talking to myself about not doing the one thing I am good at."