Every country in the world is experiencing its own particular version of the ongoing global health-and-economic crisis.  Russia faces a particularly complex one, aggravated by outstanding and escalating mismanagement.

Putin relies on the habitual combination of information control and targeted repressions for suppressing the discontent; yet, his own sociological research, conducted—rather unconventionally—by the Federal Protection Service (FSO), warns about rising anger (Meduza.io, July 16).

Feigning supreme confidence, Putin refuses to acknowledge the swift erosion of his severely corrupt autocratic regime, but denials only back him into an ever-tighter corner, from which, as previous experiences indicate, he tends to lash out violently—and in an unpredictable direction.

The National Football League celebrated its 100th anniversary last year. This should be a time of self-congratulation for the brutal sport, which has no similar counterpart outside the United States.

The NFL's megaprofits dwarf those of other professional sports in the U.S. The Super Bowl, not the World Series, is America's national sports event.

Yet the NFL is in deep trouble like never before.  Here’s why – and here are helpful suggestions on how it could cure its hypocrisy.

[Yesterday, Bari Weiss – whom Vanity Fair  called the New York Times's "star opinion writer" and The Jerusalem Post  named  the seventh most influential Jew in the world – wrote a resignation letter to the Times’ publisher A.G. Sulzberger.  Fox News reported it as an event that “rocked the entire media world” – “a scathing indictment of the paper’s out-of-control liberal culture.”  Her letter in full is below.]

Dear A.G.,

It is with sadness that I write to tell you that I am resigning from The New York Times.

I joined the paper with gratitude and optimism three years ago. I was hired with the goal of bringing in voices that would not otherwise appear in your pages: first-time writers, centrists, conservatives and others who would not naturally think of The Times as their home…

Instead, a new consensus has emerged in the press, but perhaps especially at this paper: that truth isn’t a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else.

Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times. But Twitter has become its ultimate editor.

America is depressed. The combination of the Chinese coronavirus and racial unrest has left many Americans searching for ways to avoid the news. Donald Trump’s popularity has suffered—not because he is responsible for these problems but rather because they happened while he occupies the nation’s highest office.

What Americans need now is a jolt of positivity and optimism. Many loyal Trump supporters have lost hope for America and fear that even if the president wins four more years, it will not matter. To make matters worse, some supporters don’t even have clarity as to what the president’s 2020 message is.

So, while the campaign slogan for 2016 was “Make America Great Again,” allow me to offer a variation for 2020: Make America Dream Again!

To that end, I offer some suggestions for a platform that might inspire such dreaming:

President Donald Trump on Tuesday (7/14) listed over 40 different disastrous things that former Vice President Joe Biden proposed to do if elected president.

“It’s probably never been a time when candidates are so different,” Trump said during a press conference in the Rose Garden of the White House. “We want law and order; they don’t want law and order. We want strong closed borders with people able to come in through merit, through a legal process; they don’t want to have any borders at all.”

Here is the list of Biden’s proposals, drawn from the transcript of the president’s press conference:

[For many years, TTPers have known about the deranged Chicom claim of the entire South China Sea.  A typical article is The Trap of Lizzie Webber (March 2009).  How deranged?  Here is a map of the Chicom claim:

The South China Sea is Where Chicoms Must Stop Being Children (June 2015).  Now, ace national security reporter Bill Gertz gives us the latest on how President Trump is standing up to the Chicoms in one of the world’s most critically strategic areas. – JW]