President Vladimir Putin’s approval rating is regularly accepted as a proxy measure for the level of Russia’s internal cohesion. And his support remains on a sky-high plateau, where it has stood since the explosion of jingoism caused by the annexation of Crimea in March 2014.

However, powerful and divisive forces are eroding this purported cohesion, turning Russian society into a disillusioned and apathetic crowd—resembling the nation that failed, 99 years ago, to turn the dethroning of Tsar Nicolas II into a lasting liberating moment.

Stalin’s grave on Red Square was covered with flowers last Saturday (March 5), on the day of his death; and many Russians still cherish or long for a “firm hand,” no matter the millions of destroyed lives such authoritarian leadership has historically produced (Slon.ru).

This urge to escape from the apparent dead end of the present by reliving the “glorious” past translates into a desire to ignore the disasters that mark Russia’s current decline.

The dream of a Brics ascendancy has ended in sadness and squalor after the iconic figure of the era was seized by police at his home here, to the rapturous applause of Brazil’s stock exchange.

Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, or “Lula” to the world, is sacrosanct no more. The once beloved president – and former Fiat car worker – who came to personify Brazil’s seeming rise to prosperity and global stature is under criminal investigation for his role in the ever-spreading Lava Jato (car wash) scandal. 

So are his three sons, and his wife. “Nobody is above the law in this country,” said the lead prosecutor, Carlos Fernando dos Santos Lima. 

The shock comes as Lula’s economic legacy turns to ruin. Output has been falling for most of the past nine quarters. It contracted 3.8% last year. The OECD expects another 4% fall this year, the deepest slump since national records began in 1901. 

It is a cruel twist of fortune for those who thought Brazil had reached the premier league, with deep-sea oil reserves fit for an emirate, and a currency so strong that it cost more for a coffee in Sao Paolo than in Oslo, Tokyo, or Zurich in the glory days of 2008. Those days are gone, as is Brazil’s future yet again.

The US Secretary of State, John Kerry, thinks his country has a ‘profound interest… in a very strong United Kingdom staying in a strong EU.’ President Obama is planning to join in campaigning against the “Brexit” (Britain’s exit from the EU, on which there will be a national referendum on June 23).

They say this not because they think it is good for us British, but because it is in their interests that we influence Europe in a free-trading, Atlanticist direction.

Well, two can play at that game.

How would Americans like it if we argued that it is in our interests that the United States should forthwith be united with all the countries in their continent north of the Panama Canal — Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Belize, Honduras, El Salvador and Panama — into a vast customs union governed by a trans-national, unelected civil service.

Let’s call it the American Union, or AU.

There he was, stripped bare and standing in the middle of the debate stage.

Donald Trump was eviscerated in last Thursday’s debate (2/25). Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz took turns pummeling the founder of Trump University with his own words, his own history, and delivering body blow after body blow.

It was more than enough to convince any thinking person he was not a serious candidate for president. But Trump isn’t your typical presidential candidate. He’s Barack Obama-light, in every sense of the term.

What does Donald Trump stand for? What will he do if elected? What core conservative principle will he advance?

If you’re being honest, the answer to each of those questions is you have no idea.

Don’t feel bad, neither does he.

That’s not entirely true. He was fairly unambiguous about one thing he’d like to do: change the law so he can sue newspapers. When it comes to solutions to the nation’s problems, Donald Trump is the equivalent of a constitutional dumpster fire; and that’s just fine to his worshipers.

[Skye’s posts on the Forum are among the most valuable assets to being a TTPer. His is the voice of calm reasoned argument. I have treasured his friendship for well over 40 years. As someone whose IQ could not be measured by MIT as it went so far beyond the upper measurable limit of 220, Skye’s words deserve our careful consideration. --JW]

Everyone is scared witless by the potential outcome of the upcoming election.  Some more, some less – but there is more than enough reason for much of these fears. 

Conservative, libertarian, and constitutionalist Republicans fear populist Republicans.  Establishment Republicans fear all of the above and vice versa.  Establishment Democrats fear populist/socialist Democrats and vice versa.  Republicans fear Democrats, Democrats fear Republicans, and Independents fear both.

Unfortunately, these severe fears are not paranoid delusions.  The central government has become so powerful, so out of control of both the Constitution and the electorates, so deeply wrapped around the roots of everyone’s everyday life, that the “other” truly has become an existential threat.

The only hope that I can think of for escape from the onrushing Armageddon of Americans warring against Americans with the guns of the central government is restoration of constitutional restraints on the central government.

Thus the vital question: who among the various candidates is the most determined to restore constitutional limitations on the central government?

In his victory speech in South Carolina, Donald Trump vowed to sweep the twelve primaries held on Super Tuesday, March 1, and implied the race would then be over: “Let’s put this thing away!”

He also belittled rivals who claimed that as the field shrinks, they will be able to close on Trump and deny him the nomination. “They’re geniuses!” he mocked. “They don’t understand that as people drop out, I’m going to get a lot of those votes also.”

Not so fast, Donald.

Trump is the front-runner, but he has to find a way to win a majority of the delegates, and the kind of campaign he’s running is making it harder for him to crack a ceiling of about a third of the vote.

In the run-up to South Carolina, Trump came out in favor of the health-care mandate, defended Planned Parenthood, accused George W. Bush of lying about the Iraq War, and stood by his call to impeach Bush. (He later retreated on the mandate and on Bush’s supposedly lying.)

His consistent inconsistency helps explain why only four in ten GOP voters in a new Associated Press poll view Trump in a positive light. He will have trouble growing his coalition to win a majority of delegates, even as more candidates drop out.