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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION

50 STATES AND DC, CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT

Hawks, Or Pigeons In A Bad Mood? American elites have squandered our technological and manufacturing advantage over both Russia and China.David Goldman

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/hawks-or-pigeons-in-a-bad-mood/

Few dispute that the Ukraine crisis brings with it the risk of nuclear escalation. The reverse also might be true: The Ukraine crisis may be the result of a shift in the world’s nuclear balance.

With an economy smaller than the state of Texas, Russia has built strategic weapons superior to many in the American arsenal. These include land as well as submarine-launched hypersonic weapons that can carry nuclear missiles past any American defense, as well as the world’s best air defense system, the S-500. The October 4, 2021, test of Russia’s submarine-launched “Zircon” hypersonic missile was the first-ever underwater firing of a low-altitude weapon that flies at nine times the speed of sound, according to Russian claims. A Russian sub lurking a hundred miles off the American coast could nuke Washington in a flat minute.

A day later Russia test-launched its S-500 air defense system, designed to destroy aircraft and missiles in a 600-kilometer radius, including targets in close space. And last December, Russia claimed to have tested the S-550 upgrade, which allegedly can destroy ICBMs as well as satellites. Russia has sold the earlier S-400 system to India, China, and Turkey; India may be the first foreign customer for an S-500.

Putin’s War Crimes: Reported Heroes and Others by Lawrence Kadish

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18314/putin-war-crimes-heroes

While many extraordinary American companies have voluntarily taken serious financial setbacks as their contribution to defending Ukraine — now the front line in a war on the Free World by Russian President Vladimir Putin — other companies have revealed themselves as indifferent at best.

Putin has curated a long track record of turning Grozny to rubble, flattening Aleppo, devouring Georgia and Crimea, and now has been dropping cluster and vacuum bombs, banned by the Geneva Conventions, on civilian targets in Ukraine. His troops have also attacked and taken over nuclear reactors, and Putin has repeatedly agreed to humanitarian evacuation routes that, when people emerge, the Russians shell — all in sub-zero, dead-of-winter weather. The problem: if Putin is allowed to take Ukraine, it will result in further annexations in Europe. The failure to contain aggressive acts results in further aggressive acts.

It is important immediately to follow the impressive example of worldwide heroes, above all, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. British Petroleum willingly absorbed a $25 billion loss. Elon Musk immediately made his Starlink satellite broadband internet service available in Ukraine and donated Starlink terminals to the people of Ukraine, in the event that their cyber capability was downed.

Kamala invades Poland: Witness the art of cackle diplomacy-Roger Kimball

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/kamala-harris-poland-diplomacy-ukraine/

You can tell that the Biden administration is getting serious. They have unleashed their ultimate weapon, cackle diplomacy.  The warhead is nicknamed Harris, and it is now in Poland cackling away, endeavoring to assemble the high-level Pierogis before Russia flattens Kyiv or Putin decides to go nuclear — and by “go nuclear,” alas, I mean “go nuclear.”

Some observers say that sending Kamala Harris on this mission will give her a chance to “burnish” her foreign policy credentials. Cynical folks — and I would include myself in that group — think it is just another emission of fog by America’s first certifiably senile administration.

“Ukraine is a country in Europe,” Harris recently explained to universal hilarity, “it exists next to another country called Russia. Russia is a bigger country. Russia is a powerful country. Russia decided to invade a smaller country called Ukraine. So, basically, that’s wrong, and it goes against everything that we stand for.”

Did I mention that the hilarity was laced with feelings of appalled panic? This, after all, was the vice president of the United States.

The messaging about Russia has not been particularly consistent. We all hate Putin: that message was clear enough. And we are all supposed to fawn over the latest pin-up from Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky.

There are a few other things that the official directive specifies. We’re not supposed to mention the thirty bioresearch labs that the US maintains in Ukraine. We are not supposed to mention Ukrainian support for Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation, its government’s efforts to undermine Donald Trump, or its connection with George Soros, Klaus Schwab’s “Great Reset,” or its lavish financial support of the Biden family and the families of other high-ranking Americans. All that is off-script, so, even though it is potentially clarifying, I won’t mention it.

THE STENCH OF SPYGATE: It won’t go away, no matter how much the media ignores it. by George Neumayr

https://spectator.org/the-stench-of-spygate/

The more we learn about the Obama administration’s spying on Donald Trump, the worse it looks. The investigation into his alleged collusion with Russia never had any foundation to it. Feverish partisans pushed for the probe. Chief among them were John Brennan, Obama’s CIA director who despised Trump, and Peter Strzok, Brennan’s FBI liaison who texted his mistress that he was going to “stop” Trump.

The partisan origins of the probe are impossible to deny. But were they illegal? Can an administration just open up an investigation on a political opponent based on partisan hunches? This remains to be seen. Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe has said that “quite a few more indictments” are likely to come from special counsel John Durham’s investigation into the probe. “[Then-Attorney General] Bill Barr, John Durham, and I, all looking at this intelligence, agreed there was not a proper predicate to open a criminal investigation into the Trump campaign, yet that happened,” he said.

The Green Immoralists Elite ideology divorced from reality impoverishes people and can get them killed. By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2022/03/09/the-green-immoralists/

Thousands are dying from Russian missiles and bombs in the suburbs of Ukraine. 

In response, the Biden Administration’s climate-change envoy, multimillionaire and private-jet owning John Kerry, laments that Russian president Vladimir Putin might no longer remain his partner in reducing global warming.

“You’re going to lose people’s focus,” Kerry frets. “You’re going to lose big-country attention because they will be diverted, and I think it could have a damaging impact”

“Impact”? 

Did the global moralist Kerry mean by “impact” the over 650 Russian missiles that impacted Ukrainian buildings and tore apart children? 

Are Russian soldiers losing their green “focus”? When Putin threatens nuclear war is he merely “diverted”? Would letting off a few nukes be “damaging” to the human environment?

Climate-change moralists love humanity so much in the abstract that they must shut down its life-giving gas, coal, and oil in the concrete. And they value humans so little that they don’t worry in the here and now that ensuing fuel shortages and exorbitant costs cause wars, spike inflation, and threaten people’s ability to travel or keep warm.

The Biden Administration stopped all gas and oil production in the ANWR region of Alaska. It ended all new federal leases for drilling. It is cancelling major new pipelines. It is leveraging lending agencies not to finance oil and gas drilling. 

It helped force the cancellation of the EastMed pipeline that would have brought needed natural gas to southern Europe. And it has in just a year managed to turn the greatest oil and gas producer in the history of the world into a pathetic global fossil-fuel beggar. 

Now gas is heading to well over $5 a gallon. In overregulated blue states, it will likely hit $7. 

The result is left-wing terror that the voters in the coming midterm election might rightly blame Democrats for hamstringing the American ability to travel, keep warm in winter and cool in summer, and buy affordable food.

17 Absurd Lies Biden Told During His State Of The Union Speech By: Jordan Boyd

https://thefederalist.com/2022/03/01/17-absurd-lies-biden-told-during-his-state-of-the-union-speech/

Biden tried to downplay his plummeting approval but instead offered a speech riddled with falsehoods and contradictions.

In a desperate bid to console a nation reeling from crises he created, President Joe Biden delivered his first official State of the Union Address on Tuesday.

The Democrat attempted to downplay his plummeting approval by promising to do better in his second year in office but instead offered a speech riddled with falsehoods and contradictions.

While Biden’s address was supposed to breathe new life into his presidency, Americans are meanwhile plagued with rising prices, a southern border crisis, and now an overseas conflict that leaves them feeling like “the State of our union is in crisis because of Joe Biden.” Here are 17 absurd lies Biden told during his State of the Union speech.

‘Freedom Will Always Triumph Over Tyranny’

Biden opened his speech by praising the lack of Covid-19 theater in the legislative chambers and claiming that “freedom will always triumph over tyranny.”

The audacious claim comes just a few months after the president tried to force the coronavirus jab on American workers, pushed his administration to work with Big Tech to censor his political opponents, and smeared Republicans as domestic terrorists for caring about their children’s education.

Powerful Sanctions Stopped Russia

This Was the Most Infuriating Part of Biden’s State of the Union Speech By Matt Margolis

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2022/03/01/this-was-the-most-infuriating-part-of-bidens-state-of-the-union-speech-n1562880

Well, that was painful.

The word is Joe Biden had to rewrite his State of the Union Dumpster Fire speech because of the Russia/Ukraine conflict, and you could tell. It was an awkward, choppy speech that made me cringe at times.

But, perhaps the worst and most infuriating thing about the speech, aside from the blatant lies about his record, was what was missing.

Joe Biden was so desperate for a 9/11 anniversary photo op that he set an arbitrary date for withdrawing from Afghanistan, without any conditions for the Taliban, causing a disastrous evacuation that resulted thousands of Americans left behind and 13 U.S. service members dead.

Did You Catch Biden’s Ukraine Gaffe?Matt Vespa

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2022/03/01/biden-on-ukraine-putin-will-never-gain-the-hearts-and-souls-of-the-iranian-p-n2604001

“Putin may circle Kyiv with tanks, but he will never gain the hearts and souls of the Iranian people.”

It didn’t take long for Joe Biden to trip over his own tongue. Look, I wasn’t expecting much. I know you felt the same way, but lordly—this was a faceplant. When you’re declaring your support for a besieged people, it’s probably a good idea to get the geographical location right. Biden spoke at length about the Ukraine war. How Putin underestimated the resolve of the free world, and how a weaker Russia will be the result of this conflict. 

A Bizarre, Contradictory State of the Union Falters after Strong Start on Ukraine By Dan McLaughlin

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/a-bizarre-contradictory-state-of-the-union

Joe Biden’s first official State of the Union address started strong; he spent the first twelve minutes talking about Ukraine, on which there is a surprising amount of bipartisan consensus. The Ukrainian ambassador was present, and many members of Congress from both parties were wearing blue and yellow or otherwise adorned with Ukrainian flags and symbols. Probably the most memorable line was Biden’s vow to defend “every single inch” of NATO territory.

It went downhill once he got to the state of our union, on which Biden rambled on for another hour. He hectored Congress to pass a bunch of bills that it has already rejected. He proposed to lower the costs of various things by just calling for them to cost less. He called the infrastructure bill “the single biggest investment in history” and declared, “We’re done talking about infrastructure weeks. We’re going to have an infrastructure decade.” You could tell the pandemic is really and truly over when we saw a return to Democrats demonizing the pharma companies that gave us life-saving vaccines.

Biden offered some gestures — too little, too late — to the center. “The answer is not to defund the police. The answer is to FUND the police with the resources and training they need to protect our communities. Fund them!” But he immediately tacked back to bashing gun rights.

At times, Biden failed to recognize the inherent contradictions of his own postures.

BIDEN BASICALLY ADMITS THAT HIS 2 TRILLION RESCUE PLAN WAS A COLOSSAL FAILURE

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/03/02/biden-basically-admits-that-his-2-trillion-rescue-plan-was-a-colossal-failure/

“Biden wants the public to believe that today’s hard times aren’t his fault. He’s counting on the public being more mentally decrepit than he is.”

“Few pieces of legislation have done more in a critical moment in our history to lift us out of a crisis.” That was how President Joe Biden, early in his State of the Union address, described the $2 trillion “American Rescue Plan.” It’s hard to know where to begin in unpacking why this is so incredibly wrong.

But Biden himself provided one answer by spending much of his speech talking about how he’s going to fight rising inflation.

Put another way, what Biden said is that Americans need relief from Biden’s “rescue.”

How about his claim that this bill did “more in a critical moment in our history”? Let’s review.

First, the country wasn’t in an economic crisis. Not by a long shot. When Biden signed his deficit-financed spending spree into law, he did so more than a year after the recession had ended, and almost at the exact moment that GDP had regained all the ground it lost during the pointless COVID lockdowns.

Unemployment was plunging — much faster than expected — and prices were steady. And even some prominent liberals warned at the time that dumping $2 trillion in borrowed cash onto a fast-growing economy would spark a surge in inflation.