Archive for 2022
February 24, 2022
HMM: Russian forces at the Antonov airport about 15 miles outside of Kyiv.
If reports are to be believed, the Russians seem to be executing a shock-and-awe style combined arms assault of the sort that was a U.S. monopoly for many years. We shouldn’t be surprised that they’ve learned from us, but we shouldn’t be happy about it either. The big question is whether they can sustain it logistically.
See also Austin Bay’s thoughts.
21ST CENTURY HEADLINES: Dogs with rare eating disorder may benefit from Viagra.
I DO ADMIRE THEIR SPIRIT: Ukrainians answer president’s call to arms as they clear out gun shops of AK-47s.
PUTIN: WHY SHOULD CHINA HAVE AN EXCLUSIVE ON MASS BIO-WEAPONS? Ukrainian Officials Warn of Fighting in Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.
Russian and Ukrainian forces were fighting for control of the Chernobyl exclusion zone on Thursday evening local time, with Ukrainian officials warning that damage to nuclear storage facilities could send “radioactive dust” across Europe.
“Russian occupation forces are trying to seize the” Chernobyl nuclear power plant, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said in a Twitter post. “Our defenders are giving their lives so that the tragedy of 1986 will not be repeated….This is a declaration of war against the whole of Europe.”
The Chernobyl reactor was the site of the worst nuclear disaster in history, when the core of the reactor melted down. Anton Herashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s Ministry of the Interior, wrote on Facebook that Russian forces had moved to Chernobyl from Belarus, Ukraine’s northern neighbor.
“National Guard troops responsible for protecting the storage unit for dangerous radioactive waste are putting up fierce resistance,” Herashchenko wrote, in an English translation posted by the New York Times. If an explosion punctures the encasement of the reactor, “radioactive dust could cover the territory of Ukraine, Belarus and the countries of the European Union.”
Possibly not strong enough, according to some reports: Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Captured by Russian Forces.
KEY POINT:
If you supported global policies which drove up the price of petroleum (that is, Russia's key foreign-exchange producing export), your policies empowered Putin and the Russian military.
Did you get good value for your money?
— Seth Barrett Tillman (@SethBTillman) February 24, 2022
HMM: New COVID-19 vaccine offers 100% efficacy against hospitalization, makers say. That’s nice, although vaccines to date have underperformed.
WHEN ALL YOU HAVE IS A HAMMER, EVERYTHING LOOKS LIKE GLOBAL WARMING: Not a parody: John Kerry warns of the carbon footprint of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
NEWS YOU (OR A PARENT) CAN USE: Balance Exercises for Seniors: Easy to Perform Fall Prevention Workouts to Improve Stability and Posture. #CommissionEarned
QUESTION ASKED: Is Putin’s Next Target the Baltic States?
JEFFREY CARTER: Tech in Ukraine.
A lot of companies I heard pitches from over the past decade or so would outsource their technical development to Ukraine. You always knew that there was a chance the Russian Bear would upset that tea kettle but it was really hard to measure the exact probability of the threat.
Ukraine had an army. It didn’t have nuclear capability since Democratic President Bill Clinton told them to get rid of their nuclear missiles in 1991. He assured them that NATO would have their back. In 2014, Democratic President Barack Obama allowed Putin to waltz into the Crimea with nary a peep. Today, Putin ignored the tepid pleas of Democratic President Joe Biden and entered Ukraine. Hint, sanctions don’t deter a dictator. Neither does tough talk.
By the way, the elite class treated Ukraine as a honey pot after the Cold War. John Kerry, Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, The Clintons and plenty of others either profited or had members of their families profit from Ukraine. When you hear a politician talk about defending Ukraine, see if you can follow the money.
One of the problems with trying to decide whether to actually do something about Putin is that Ukraine’s government isn’t exactly a picture of ethical purity. It’s hard to get excited about defending a corrupt government and it doesn’t end well as we saw in Vietnam.
Over in Asia, things are happening. If China decides to mount an attack on Taiwan, and it’s certainly within the realm of probability today, does anyone think tough talk and sanctions will deter them? This morning, Chinese Air Force fighters entered the Taiwanese air space.
That brings me to the tech companies that are outsourcing their tech to places like China and Ukraine. How secure is it?
Everything is going swimmingly, as they say.
SCHADENFREUDE OVERLOAD: Report: The Chickens Come Home to Roost for Chris Wallace. “My thought bubble on this is: What the hell did Wallace expect? Even absent the Cuomo/Zucker scandals, it wasn’t exactly a big secret how bad things were at CNN, not just from a ratings perspective but a coverage perspective. Between Brian Stelter, Jake Tapper, Don Lemon and others, they’ve been an embarrassment for years, so much so that even reliably left-wing news outlets like the New York Times and the Washington Post have taken to criticizing some of the decision-making and reporting styles there.”
THE EVER-EXPANDING PARAMETERS OF MODERN WARFARE: Twitter admits it mistakenly removed Ukraine open source intelligence accounts. “The people behind the suspended accounts said they believed they had been the target of an attack by Russian bots—computers that mimic the activity of human users—that had mass-reported their content as being suspicious. This led their content to be removed automatically by Twitter’s moderation technology.“
FOR PJMEDIA/TOWNHALL VIP SUPPORTERS: Vladimir Putin, National Honor, and the Folly of War.
Why did Putin give the order to do the thing I honestly thought he wouldn’t do — and how do I (and the rest of the world) avoid making a similar miscalculation in the future?
I didn’t entirely discount Putin starting a war. Last month I noted for PJ Media readers that Russia had sortied six amphibious assault ships — a significant fraction of Russian naval power. That flotilla posed a direct threat to Ukraine’s major port at Odessa, and I’ve seen at least one report (who knows, at this early stage, if it’s true) that Russian troops have indeed landed there.
“That’s the major reason why a full-scale Russia vs. Ukraine war suddenly looks more likely than ever,” I wrote back then.
Still, I figured that most likely, Putin was bluffing, merely trying to destabilize Ukraine.
The late, great historian Donald Kagan might have known better.
If you’re a subscriber, or thinking of becoming one, you’ll want to read the whole thing.
ENRICHING, EMPOWERING, AND EMBOLDENING PUTIN: How The Greens Brought War to Ukraine.
It’s hard to keep from laughing at the leaders who created this mess to curry favor, votes and money from the Greens. Take, for example, German chancellor Olaf Scholz whose contribution to the fight was halting the certification of the Nord Stream 2 Baltic gas pipeline. I’d put my money on the halt being temporary. Germany already gets half its gas from Russia. Germans are facing record energy prices and the government is tapping its treasury to ease consumer pressure.
Dmitry Medvedev, former Russian president could not restrain himself. “Welcome to the new world where Europeans will soon have to pay 2,000 euros per thousand cubic meters.” Were I a friend of Chancellor Scholz I’d whisper in his ear a suggestion from Andrew A Michta, that the best way to show Putin you mean business is not to make an unlikely threat but rather to halt the plan to shut down its three remaining nuclear reactors in Emsland, Isar and Neckarwestheim that the post-Merkel Germans have foolishly scheduled to shut down this year. Much of the same advice should be given to the Biden administration—undo the restrictions you are forcing on conventional energy production if you want to show you are serious.
Of course, no one would consider this administration serious.
The West lacks serious leaders. And that carries costs.
MATT MARGOLIS: CPAC 2022 Day 0: Drinking With VodkaPundit.
STAND UP FOR SCIENCE!, WHICH DOES NOT SUPPORT MASK MANDATES: At Princeton, Georgetown and elsewhere, college students protest mask mandates.
Matthew Wilson, a sophomore at Princeton University, is perplexed by his institution’s mask mandate. He does not find the mask mandate necessary “given that our Covid transmission rates are so low and 99% of students have been vaccinated,” he told The College Fix via email.
Recently, Wilson started a petition to end his university’s mask mandate.
“Princeton must end its obsolete pandemic rules and allow students, faculty, and staff to return to a full, complete sense of normalcy, which we haven’t experienced since March 2020. Needless and uncompromising restrictions — particularly the mask mandate — serve few and do far more harm than good,” states the petition, signed by hundreds of students.
Wilson is not alone.
As state political leaders across the nation have begun repealing mask mandates and other COVID-19 regulations, many universities refuse to follow suit. In response, college students have taken to protests and petitions to demand an end to the mask mandates.
About time.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Prof alleges ‘gender bias’ in ‘masculine’ jobs. Business owner reminds her of reality.
At the University of Colorado-Boulder, Leeds School of Business Associate Professor Stefanie Johnson and her colleagues recently conducted a study concluding that attractive women are negatively affected by their appearance when applying for “masculine” jobs, such as construction jobs, creating a form of what she says is gender bias.
Johnson connects her hypothesis with the “Beauty Is Beastly” effect when a woman’s career opportunities are affected by her appearance.
Johnson and colleagues blame American societal norms for this observed inequality. . . .
Not all agree with the study, though.
Daniel Baker, the owner of Baker Concrete Construction, told Campus Reform, “We at Baker look for the best person for the role” but added, “I believe it’s high time that all men and women be treated equal.” Baker also brought up a factor in the hiring process that Johnson did not consider in her study: “All Baker co-workers must be physically fit enough for the job being interviewed for.”
I can think of some other factors, too.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: WAR — With a Weakling in the Oval Office, Putin Does What He Wants. “American liberals will no doubt say that the blithering idiot in the Oval Office had nothing to to with Putin’s flex. I think we all know, however, that Uncle Vlad probably wouldn’t be so bold if the United States of America had a functional president. As we discussed yesterday, when the resident of the White House is a weak leftist, the bad people in the world tend to have a field day.”
COMPLETELY, OBVIOUSLY TRUE:
Because fuel exports are the basis of the Russian economy, Putin’s war-making capability depends critically on energy prices being high, as they are now. The most effective step countries like the U.S. can take in response does not require sanctions, let alone military action. It’s simply to remove artificial constraints on energy production, especially on relatively clean natural gas. That means removing roadblocks to fracking, pipelines and LNG export facilities that could supply Europe.
It also means reversing our decades-long suppression of nuclear power.
So why aren’t we doing it? Let’s just say there’s more reason to think that environmentalists and other energy-deniers are on the Russian payroll than there ever was for Trump.
BECAUSE HE’S THE KAMALA OF SECSTATES: Why don’t we see more of Secretary of State Antony Blinken? “His fleeting expression at 0:40 would be hilarious if the situation were not so dire.”
When you’re a Democrat official and Norah O’Donnell is looking that visibly unimpressed, you’re doing very badly.
MICHAEL WALSH ON UKRAINE: “Dear Democrats and NeverTrumpumpkins: after five years of demonization of Putin and Russia, are you happy now? You own this, and there’s nothing your idiot president can do about it. Congratulations.”
So is it fair to ask if Biden is on the payroll of Putin? As Walter Russell Mead wrote in 2017:
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.
As I wrote in late 2019: “You know who did do these things? Obama. You know who supports these things now? Democrats.”
