[I have known Paul Goble since we worked together on Soviet issues when he was a chief analyst at the RAND Corporation in the 1980s.  In the years since, he’s had an exceedingly distinguished career in academia, diplomacy, and scholarship, particularly in regard to Russia and the former Soviet space. He knows whereof he speaks. –JW]

Russian President Vladimir Putin has long promoted himself as the man who rebuilt the power of the Russian state after the chaos of the 1990s.

However, the Wagner Group mutiny highlights why that rings false—not only because it was an armed challenge to Putin’s authority but also because the relationship between the Kremlin leader and Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner “private military company” (PMC), is a model of how Putin has dealt with others in the Russian political elite across the board.

In case after case, the Russian president has destroyed the institutions of the Russian state and replaced them with others based on personal ties and private understandings, a situation that has led some observers to describe the Putin regime as a failed state.

This in turn amplifies worries about the coming post-Putin transition, where the absence of institutions linked together by law and transparent practice could easily lead to a war of all against all in which force alone will determine the outcome.

The New York Times has twice in one week run pieces raking Biden over the coals for denying the existence of his young granddaughter in Arkansas, while there have been numerous reports from mainstream outlets airing anonymous West Wing grievances over aides' inability to find prime times to schedule public events for the president who just isn't up to the rigors of a full day.

It's a far cry from the earlier mainstream reports seeking to cover for Biden's frequent gaffes (he's just so passionate!) and repetitious use of false stories (he's just trying to relate!). Still, the media have continued to try explaining away his comments such as "God save the Queen!"

Showing how even the mainstream media — which Biden has always griped about even when they generally provided uncritical, fawning coverage — might be growing inclined to shove him out to the retirement pasture, a blunt evaluation of Biden and how he treats White House aides popped up in Axios about angry Joe "Old Yeller" Biden.

Turns out he’s the abusive jerk of a boss we always knew he is.

In every horror movie, there’s a crescendo of terror as the monsters (zombies, giant spiders, birds, aliens, or anything else) are suddenly everywhere. No matter where you turn, they are coming for you.

A father’s rant about a pediatrician who sought to inculcate his nine- and seven-year-old sons with gender madness has gone viral for that reason. It shows that the gender monsters are everywhere.

However, in every horror movie, this crescendo is also the point at which the brave people still standing turn and fight…and in a good movie, they win. Let’s hope that, as parents start to realize that there’s a war for their children, they fight and win.  Elon is right:

[This is the most sacred political document ever written. The most patriotic thing you can do today is to read America’s founding document, enunciating the most moral principles for the creation of any government in the history of humanity – to read it aloud to yourself, to your family, to your friends, and let the words sink deeply into your soul and theirs.

The following text is a transcription of the Stone Engraving of the parchment Declaration of Independence on display in the Rotunda at the National Archives Museum. The spelling and punctuation reflects the original.]

In Congress, July 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America. When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Our national Fourth of July holiday—currently the nation’s 247^th since the first in 1776—marks the birth of the United States.

The iconic Declaration of Independence was published on the 4^th and largely written by Thomas Jefferson. Its core sentence would become among the most famous words in American history:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Those aspirations at the outset pledged the new American nation to hold to its promises “that all men are created equal.”

But note what the Declaration was not.

Last week, Michelle Obama, the politician, issued a formal position statement on Twitter regarding the Supreme Court decision to eliminate affirmative action in higher education.

In doing so, Michelle not only revealed her political ambition, which I believe includes the Democrat nomination for president in 2024, but also the likelihood that she herself was an affirmative action student at Princeton University in 1981.

In my film and book of the same name, Michelle Obama 2024: Her Real Life Story and Plan for Power, I do a deep dive into Michelle’s Princeton University experience. What I discovered is an obvious beneficiary of racial preferences who feels obliged to deny her privilege and to denounce the very system that bestowed those privileges as racist.

What I also discovered is, during her time at Princeton, Michelle had unconsciously acquired a race-based bag of tricks from which she could draw in her quest for political power one day. Like today.