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One man is very happy today: Justin Fidel Trudeau.  Putin’s attack on Ukraine is sucking all the oxygen out of the media room.  As I’m sure you know by now, gentle readers, regarding Trudeau’s declaration of communism, he just said: “ooops!  Never mind. Didn’t really mean it.”  Mostly likely the upper house of Parliament wasn’t going to go for a permanent state of emergency made necessary by terroristic bouncy castles, Canadian financial markets were horrified by the reality of people pulling their money out lest it be seized by Marxists, and the polling must have been Biden/Harris bad.  But now we have a real international, people-are-being-blown-into-little-bits crisis.  Victor Davis Hanson at American Greatness, explains: 

When does he[Putin] strike?

First, Putin moves on neighboring former Soviet republics when the world price of oil is high, and his coffers are full. So he went into Georgia in 2008 and into Eastern Ukraine and Crimea in 2014 when he thought he had the financial wherewithal and public support to do so.

But when the world is awash in oil, prices dip, and the United States reigns as the largest gas and oil producer, he hesitates. So he remained static between 2017 and 2020.

Second, when the United States increases the defense budget and deters its enemies, Putin also pauses. In contrast, when America “resets” or appeases, he is emboldened.

In 2008, the United States was battered by sky-high oil prices and bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan. Then between2009 and 2016, President Obama went on an apology tour, cut defense spending, boasted of a new ‘Russian reset,’ contextualized Iranian and North Korean aggression, and begged Putin to behave until Obama was reelected in 2012—in exchange for dismantling U.S. missile defense programs in Eastern Europe. Obama then invited Russia into the Middle East after a 40-year absence.

As a result, during all those years Putin formally invaded Georgia, Eastern Ukraine, and Crimea. But between 2017 and 2020, Putin was quieter.

In 2018, the Trump Administration killed attacking Russian mercenaries in Syria. It got out of an unfavorable missile deal with Russia in 2019. It sold offensive weapons to Ukraine. It maintained sanctions on Russian oligarchs. And it greatly increased defense spending.

No surprise that Putin then did not threaten his neighbors with military mobilizations on their borders.

Third, when NATO is in disarray, Putin also turns aggressive.

Could Putin have also been intimidated by mean tweets?  If that keeps him within Russia’s borders, I’ll take a double helping.  Keep in mind when Putin threatened Ukraine the last time, Obama/Biden boldly sent blankets.

Fourth, when a U.S. president talks trash and yet proves anemic, Putin loses his cool at such empty bombast and turns aggressive.

Obama repeatedly ridiculed Putin with putdowns of the Russian country and people: ‘Their economy doesn’t produce anything that anybody wants to buy, except oil and gas and arms. They don’t innovate.’

Yet Obama was afraid even to sell defensive weapons to Ukraine to combat Russian aggression and had implored Putin to give him ‘space.’

Which Putin graciously did, no doubt laughing his ass off all the while.

Speaking softly while carrying a club rather than loudly with a twig better persuades Putin not to try something dangerous.

To the degree America embraces all four of the strategies above, Putin will likely not attack anyone.

If we at least embrace one or two of the above protocols, he may still stay put.

But if we ignore all of these time-proven antidotes, then we can almost guarantee that Putin will either mobilize against or actually invade a former Soviet republic.

Biden has managed to violate all four principles. Is it then any surprise that a predictably opportunistic dictator has massed hundreds of thousands of troops on Ukraine’s borders?

Displays of weakness like this can do nothing other than encourage America’s enemies to attack America’s allies:

At the NY Post, Kyle Smith points out other Putin encouraging clown shows:

‘What ever [sic] happens in Ukraine we shouldn’t underestimate the fact the United States has retaken the adult chair in the world,’ claimed former Bill Clinton White House spokesman Joe Lockhart on Twitter. ‘Biden has restored American leadership so damaged by Trump. The world needs us and we have a President who can and does lead.’

A great many Ukrainians are mourning over the bodies of their families, thanks to Biden’s adult leadership.

Biden and whoever is giving him orders about what he’s allowed to do are running the administration like a woke blog. After gathering half a century of experience, supposedly mastering the intricacies of Washington, DC and using that expertise to be wrong on more or less every big foreign-policy question over that period, Biden’s focus is primarily on issuing dumb young-adult taunts to his detractors by, for instance, appointing Merrick Garland attorney general (then watching Garland treat angry parents at school-board meetings like al Qaeda), nominating for comptroller of the currency a woman who expressly argued for driving fossil-fuel companies out of business, and nominating to the Fed another woman who said much the same thing.

Biden tried to use executive action to hamstring fossil fuels by imposing a “social cost” calculation on their actions, then, when a court struck this down, froze (again) new drilling on federal lands.

Imagine what all of this self-sabotaging looks like to Putin. Here we have a man whose continued relevance, hence his worldview, is dependent on understanding that fossil fuel is king. The idea of Putin weakening his own hand on the geopolitical stage is absurd. But then again, Putin, unlike the average Swarthmore climate-justice obsessive or senior White House official, lives in a world in which hard power determines outcomes. Putin has gas and oil, and these become more valuable every day Biden schemes to handicap US gas and oil. Putin is like the playground bully manhandling a little kid who keeps asking, ‘Why do you keep hitting yourself?’ Except Biden’s America keeps hitting itself even when Putin is far away.

SD Governor Kristi Noem, at Fox News, sharpens the point

When it comes to both foreign policy and his liberal energy agenda, President Joe Biden has embarrassed our nation. I can sum up President Biden’s incompetence in these areas with one simple story: a tale of two pipelines.

On one hand, Biden blocked the crucial Keystone XL Pipeline, signaling to the world that American energy independence is no longer a priority. On the other hand, he green-lit the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, strengthening Russia’s energy hold on Europe. And in the process, he gave Russia the leverage to create the crisis that we are witnessing unfold in Ukraine.

It’s hard to invade another country if you can’t afford the fuel, munitions and other necessities of combat.  Also at Fox, KT McFarland illustrates the one thing Biden could do, but absolutely won’t, that could shut Putin down:

The single most important thing that President Biden can do, forget the sanctions and all the others he could… tell the American people, I am reopening the American energy industry. In fact, Providence has given us the greatest stockpile and supplies of oil and natural gas of any other region in the world. I’m going to open that up, and then he could go to the Germans and the Europeans and say, I’m going to give you energy security. Buy cheap, clean American natural gas. Forget about the Russians. He could then go to the Asians and say, I’m going to supply you with energy as well. Not only would that take away the leverage of Russia and China, it would also drive the prices of energy down and bankrupt Russia. They need high revenues from oil, or they can’t pay for anything else.

Why won’t Biden do that?  He—actually, his handlers—would have to admit Trump was right and he is to blame for the Inflation and skyrocketing energy prices he caused.  His climate change Czar, the treasonous and buffoonish John Kerry called for a climate change summit only a few days ago:   

Priorities…

The man chosen by U.S. President Joe Biden to be his Special Envoy for Climate said other world tensions, including coronavirus and the ongoing Ukraine crisis, ‘will not change the reality of what is happening every day with respect to our climate,’ and called the issue an ‘international threat for all of us.’

‘There are no politics in this. There is no ideology in this. This is not anything to do with some of the issues’ of concern for the U.S. administration, Kerry said at a news briefing in Cairo with Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shukry.

I’m sure Russia and China will be delighted to attend and will do whatever Kerry wants, so great is his moral authority.

Final Thoughts:   

“Biden has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”  Obama Defense Secretary Robert Gates   

 So, apparently Kamala’s Harris’ insightful comments at Munich didn’t scare Putin?  We’re led by woke, Socialist/Communist idiots.  Putin will seize as much of the former Soviet Union as he possibly can; with Biden in the White House Putin has a golden opportunity.  Dictators respect only strength, and Biden has, in a single year, demonstrated Gates was right: Biden learned nothing from his errors.  In fact, during a 02-24-22 press conference, he said: “…no one expected the sanctions to prevent anything from happening,” directly contradicting Harris’s Munich blathering, but bizarrely added: “…they are profound sanctions. Let’s have a conversation in another month or so to see if they’re working.”

Hmmm.  The Russians are attacking Kiev’s airport and pressing in every direction.  A month might be just a bit too long…  Looks like the Russians don’t do “profound.”

While the Russian Army murders thousands and seizes Ukraine, Putin will wait to see what, if anything, Biden, and NATO do.  He’ll likely seize one of the smaller NATO members, and if NATO and the US do nothing, NATO will be over.  Putin won’t stop.  With Biden as an adversary, he could theoretically seize all of Europe.

Xi is certainly closely watching our non-response. Even with this genuine crisis, Biden is likely to push ahead with far more important issues, like a new Iran deal, enforcing diversity, inclusion and equity—DIE—on our armed forces, keeping our southern border wide open, importing unvetted terrorists, ensuring every federal agency uses proper pronouns, and of course, a climate change summit that won’t solve anything, and that absolutely won’t matter when Putin has seized all the oil and natural gas producing territory he covets.

One can make a cogent argument against involving our military in Ukraine, which is not a member of NATO, however, when Putin attacks a NATO member state, it’s put up or shut up. It’s likely Xi will coordinate an attack on Taiwan with a Russian attack on a NATO country.  We’ve always been NATO’s backbone, and we’re certainly Taiwan’s only hope.  If NATO proves to be a paper tiger, we’ll long for the good old days of the Cold War.

In 2017, Walter Russell Mead wrote:

If Trump were the Manchurian candidate that people keep wanting to believe that he is, here are some of the things he’d be doing:

*Limiting fracking as much as he possibly could

*Blocking oil and gas pipelines

*Opening negotiations for major nuclear arms reductions

*Cutting U.S. military spending

*Trying to tamp down tensions with Russia’s ally Iran

Some have been suggesting Biden has already proved himself the worst president in history.  I fear all too soon, there will be no possible argument about that.  Aren’t you glad adults are in charge again?

BONUS:  Just how insane are American wokesters?  This insane:

Oh right.  Disease first, then war.  Why hasn’t anyone though of that before?

Uh-huh.  So you prefer pajama boy socialism?  Absent “toxic masculinity” you’re likely to get it.

So white Christians want Russia to rule the world?  Bagley needs to crack a history book or two.

Speaking of “deep in dementia”…

UPDATE: 02-25-22, 1115 MT:  Let’s see if I have this straight.  Ukrainians are running from the Russian Army, which will, if given the chance, kill them 100% dead as opposed to Covid’s 1%- dead, and The New York Times is most concerned they aren’t wearing face diapers?!

No wonder Putin attacked. We’re about as unserious a country as is possible to imagine.  And if that doesn’t convince him, and Xi,  to seize everything they can while America is stuck on stupid, consider these gems of wisdom from Biden’s 02-24-22 teleprompter reading, courtesy of Scott Johnson at Powerline:  

‘[N]o one expected the sanctions to prevent anything from happening. That has to sh- — this is going to take time. And we have to show resolve so he knows what’s coming and so the people of Russia know what he’s brought on them. That’s what this is all about.’

‘This is going to take time. It’s not going to occur — he’s going to say, ‘Oh my God, these sanctions are coming. I’m going to stand down.’

‘[Putin’s] ambitions are — are completely contrary to the place where the rest of the world has arrived.’

‘Specifically, the sanctions we’ve imposed exceed SWIFT. The sanctions we imposed exceed anything that’s ever been done. The sanctions we imposed have generated two thirds of the world joining us. They are profound sanctions. Let’s have a conversation in another month or so to see if they’re working.’

That last one was a complete lie.  This is absolutely delusional:

Useful Idiot

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki insisted China was not capable of countering the sum of allied sanctions. All the same, she said Biden was ‘certainly open’ to a conversation with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Then, for the second time this week, the White House spokeswoman appealed to the better nature of the Chinese communist regime: ‘This is really a moment for China, for any country, to think about what side of history they want to stand on.’

Let’s see: communists want to stand on any side of history that gives them maximum power over others?  That side?