Russia’s Siberia and America’s Alaska seem almost to touch, with the tips of the Chukotka and Seward Peninsulas only 55 miles apart across the Bering Strait.

The scene of the planned Aug. 15 meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin — the U.S. state of Alaska — has played an outsized role in Russian propaganda and mythology.

The choice of Alaska for the summit has re-ignited imperialist narratives, with Kremlin propagandists emphasizing again that the peninsula used to be a Russian territory.

Some imperialist Russians have perceived the sale of Russian Alaska to the U.S. in 1867 as treason or a tragic mistake, while others have dismissed the transaction as illegal.

For years, Russian propagandists and officials have been obsessed with Alaska and called for returning it to Moscow. In their mindset, it is part of the mythology where Alaska, Finland, Poland, and Ukraine are "historical Russian lands" that were unfairly separated from the homeland.

This is not the picture of a happy man. Born on August 12, 1930,  George Soros turned 95 ereyesterday, and for his birthday present America brought him the annihilation of his legacy.

Soros has been known for two things: making money and spending it on political influence. Over the last few years, he has handed over control of his empire to his son, Alex, and Alex Soros is proving delightfully unable to do either of those things successfully.

First, Alex ruined his reputation for making money. George was once known as “the man who broke the bank of England,” famous for making $1 billion in one day by sniffing out arbitrage opportunities in currency exchange markets.

Taking control of Soros Fund Management, Alex became the man who broke the bank of Soros. Alex is as talented at making billions vanish as George was at making them appear, but maybe he inherited some of his dad’s skill for political maneuvering and network building?

Nope. He’s a failure at that too.

Is the US Supreme Court about to disenfranchise black Americans and other racial minority voters?

You would think so, given the hysterical hyperbole found in the progressive press. “The Supreme Court Prepares to End Voting Rights As We Know Them,” shrieks the headline in the Left-wing journal Mother Jones.

Is the Republican majority on the Supreme Court really about to strike down or eviscerate the Voting Rights Act of 1965? Will the Court legalize the outlawed methods used by Southern segregationists to deny the right to vote to black Americans, like literacy tests and poll taxes?

Of course not. The occasion of these alarms is the willingness of the Court to consider a Louisiana case – Louisiana v Callais -- involving the use of race by state legislatures in drawing congressional districts.

What is at issue is the question of whether the half-century-old practice of racial gerrymandering – drawing congressional districts in such a way as to elect representatives of a particular race to the House of Representatives – is compatible with the Voting Rights Act or the US constitution.

Russian officials are sounding increasingly alarmed and even paranoid in their public statements about the future of their country. Most notably, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov claimed in September of last year that Western governments have assembled a coalition of at least fifty countries in order to dismember Russia.

What may appear to be political paranoia or an attempt to mobilize citizens behind the regime is not necessarily based on imagined enemies. It reveals the official realization that numerous negative trends are converging on Russia and that the current regime, and even the state itself, may be running out of time.

Three overarching fears preoccupy Russian officialdom: losing the war, economic collapse, and state fracture. The prospect of all three simultaneously occurring soon looms on the horizon.

What in the world happened to these beautiful girls who so grotesquely uglified themselves on purpose? These four are examples of so many more. 

We’ve all heard Aesop’s story since we were kids:

“Driven by hunger, a fox tried to reach some grapes hanging high on the vine but was unable to, although he leaped with all his strength. As he went away, the fox remarked, “Oh, you aren't even ripe yet! I don’t need any sour grapes.” — Aesop, ca. 600 BC.

The Fox and the Sour Grapes is one of the oldest fables in Western culture: When we can’t have something, we often devalue the object of our desire to lessen our sense of loss.

That fable reminds me of Democrat women, so many of whom have embraced a self-imposed ugliness and hatred for the family. It’s likely that they’ve done so because they live in a world where husbands and family are impossible. Sour, ugly grapes are the only option.

Washington has been  rocked by new releases in the declassification of material related to the origins of the Russian investigation. The material shows further evidence of a secret plan by the Clinton campaign to use the FBI and media to spread a false claim that Donald Trump was a Russian asset.

With this material, the public is finally seeing how officials and reporters set into motion what may be the greatest hoax ever perpetrated in American politics. There never was a Russian collusion conspiracy.

This is the emerging story of the real Russian conspiracy to manufacture a false narrative that succeeded in devouring much of the first term of the Trump Administration.

What is emerging in these documents is a political illusion carefully constructed by government officials and a willing media. The brilliance of the trick was getting reporters to buy into the illusion; to own it like members of an audience called to the stage by an illusionist.

The effort closely followed the three steps of the classic magic trick: The Pledge, The Turn, and The Prestige.