NAH. HE ALSO THINKS LIBERALS ARE ALL THE WEST HAS:  Putin must look at the West and laugh.

My guess is this push will seriously — ultimately — hurt Russia.  And Putin — in a little while — will find out that the west didn’t attend Oxford or Cambridge or Yale or Harvard en masse. And if he gets on our nerves enough, he’ll find how non-effete the rest of us can be.

My guess is he has troubles domestically (Yeah, and? How would you know? Just like in China, it’s a controlled information environment) and this is not so much a show of force, as a ghost dance to distract the populace and try to recover lost glory. If the west can declare war and stomp on us under that excuse, so much the better. The old KGB horror sleeps at night wrapped in dream of conquering those that brought the USSR down. It’s a pipe dream, but it keeps him warm, despite the ice in his veins.

AND SPEAKING OF STORIES:  Hastur, the Unspeakable.

WE ARE SO GORGED WITH STORY THAT IT’S IMPORTANT TO REMEMBER IT’S NOT REAL:  Just This One Simple Trick.

JUST LIKE WITH GLOBAL WARMING: Gaslighting: CBS News Wants You to Think Ukraine-Russia Caused Our Economic Problems.

You know, they want you to believe global warming is caused by the factory they hate, not the big glowing nuclear explosion in the sky.  In the same way, it must be Russia! Russia! Russia! TM and not the fact that Zhou Bai Den, most serene vice-roi of Winnie the Xi pretty much forbade all domestic drilling, plus the pipeline from Canada. Like Castreau, Brandon needs his nose rubbed in his mess.

I WONDER HOW BAD THE BANK RUN AND POLLS WERE:  Trudeau Revokes the Emergencies Act, Financial Institutions Can Unlock Accounts.

I mean the real polls, not the ones that said all Canadians loved Justine Castreau and wanted to pet his fuzzy head.

BUT THE IDIOTS ARE CONVINCED THEY CAN FRAUD IT AWAY:  Michael Bloomberg Warns Democrats They’re Headed for a ‘Wipeout’ in November.

To be fair, they probably can. It’s the butcher’s bill at the enormity of it that they’ll never be able to pay.

BEHOLD! MY SHOCKED FACE! Report: 220,000 Illegal Immigrants Slipped Past Border Patrol Since October

BRANDON’S CONCERN FOR UKRAINE’S BORDERS DOESN’T EXTEND TO OURS:  Supreme Court To Hear Biden Administration’s Appeal Over “Remain In Mexico”.

He wants ours violated harder and faster, like a two-bit pimp with a cheap movie camera.

I’M NOT SURE IT’S LEFTIST PUSHBACK:  Leftist pushback against wokeness.

I think it’s just pushback. Oh, sure, these people might have been leftist once, but then got redpilled. This is the story of the last 6 years. Particularly the last 2.

For the times, they are achanging.

ELIMINATE THE MEDICAL SCHOOL QUOTAS: The American Medical Association Should Help Patients. Instead, It’s Policing Language. “In 1986, the AMA called for smaller enrollment in medical schools, to curb an alleged doctor ‘surplus.’ In 1997, it even got the government to pay hospitals not to train doctors! Today, the AMA supports rules that make it hard for doctors from other countries to practice here. Foreign doctors must complete a U.S. residency program. They don’t get credit for having practiced abroad. Such rules preserve America’s doctor shortage.”

Plus: “I asked the AMA for an interview about this, but they declined. They sent us a statement saying they’ve worked to approve ‘approximately 20 new medical schools.’ Why does the AMA and its ‘Liaison Committee on Medical Education’ even get to approve new schools? I don’t get to approve new TV reporters.”

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: President Vladimir Putin authorises ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine, explosions heard in Kyiv.

UPDATE: Explosions Heard In Ukraine Capital Kyiv, Mariupol.

Plus: Biden says world will hold Putin accountable for ‘unprovoked and unjustified attack’ on Ukraine.

Will it, though? Full text of Biden’s statement here.

UPDATE: He’s not wrong.

Of course wokeness brings weakness. That’s why the left has been encouraging it in the West for decades, even as Russia and China have loudly eschewed it.

BREAKING: Reports Circulate That Russian Invasion of Ukraine Is ‘Underway.’

I HAVE MY DOUBTS THIS WILL WORK — PUTIN’S MORE OF A MCCARTNEY FAN:

UPDATE: That was fast:

AUSTIN BAY: On Point: Putin Escalates His Creeping War In Ukraine.

Russian tanks and mechanized infantry have invaded Ukraine’s Donbas and occupied the so-called secessionist enclaves of Luhansk and Donetsk.

Russian President Vladimir Putin calls his armored forces “peacekeepers,” sent to protect ethnic Russians threatened by Ukrainian genocide.

No one sane believes it. Putin leverages the bloody script Slobodan Milosevic’s Serbia used in the 1990s to justify invading Bosnia and Croatia, waging a war in Europe that left some 250,000 dead.

In 2008 Putin used his version of the script. He sent special forces and infantry into Georgia, igniting the Russo-Georgian War. He claimed breakaway enclaves South Ossetia and Abkhaz faced ethnic cleansing.

The Bush administration airlifted a Georgian infantry brigade from Iraq to Tbilisi. The American reaction curbed the Kremlin’s aggression and led to a ceasefire. Putin, however, kept soldiers in the enclaves.

February 2014: Putin launched a quick invasion of Crimea, using Russian special operations forces in unmarked green uniforms. Russia was recovering lost territory and protecting Russian ethnics!

March 2014: Putin annexed Crimea. For the first time since WWII, military aggression in Europe by a major European power led to annexation and territorial expansion. Moreover, Russia violated the Budapest Memorandum of 1994, a multilateral diplomatic agreement guaranteeing Ukraine’s territorial integrity.

In April 2014 the murderous drama began again. Ethnic Russian agitators in eastern Ukraine demanded political unification with Mother Russia. A suspicious group in Donetsk begged the Kremlin to send “temporary” peacekeeping troops.

And ever since, eastern Ukraine has suffered a slow war of creeping Russian aggression. . . .

What’s Putin’s strategic goal? We’ve known for quite some time. Putin is assembling the RUBK — “Rubik” as in the puzzle Rubik’s Cube.

I’ll quote from a column I wrote in November 2004. At some point a Russian leader would emerge who would try “to return to super-power status…” and restore key elements of the Soviet Union’s empire. This leader would attempt “to link the core empire strength: Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan (RUBK)…

“Russia, plus Ukraine, plus Belarus, plus Kazakhstan is a geo-strategic formula for a global power re-born.”

One last quote: “In 2004, the Kremlin of President Vladimir Putin still sees the economic benefits of a RUBK federation. He also sees it as a way to bring ethnic Russians back inside the borders of Mother Russia.”

Putin denies he seeks to recreate the Soviet Union. He lies.

Related: The Strategic Costs of Hunter Biden’s Ukrainian Corruption.

OPEN THREAD: Don’t you know that I’ll always be true.

HMMMM: I’m gonna quietly drop this mainstream report that says COVID-19 DNA fragments were patented by Moderna 3 years before the pandemic and pray the censors allow it.

OLD AND BUSTED: “The Buck Stops Here.”

The New Hotness? Republicans Pounce! GOP unites around blaming Biden for Ukraine crisis.

TRUDEAU BLINKED AND THERE’S FALLOUT:

Is this the Canada you want to live in? pic.twitter.com/0QaiGRyC7T

— Justmeet Singhdeau (Chuckles) (@EdGeinSalad) February 20, 2022

Some people are suggesting that all the account freezes were starting a bank run, as people rushed to withdraw their money in cash.

Yep. Whether you’re Canadian or non-Canadian, you can’t trust ’em now.

SPACE: Virgin Galactic on schedule to start commercial human suborbital flights this year.

#RESIST: 100Pcs I Did That Biden Funny Car Stickers Decal/Humor/Funny-That’s All Me I Did That, Funny I Did That Stickers

PUBLIC HEALTH: What Don’t the Bureaucrats Want You to Know?

ROGER SIMON: CPAC—This Time It’s Serious.

I’ve attended maybe a half-dozen of them over the years, starting around 2006, when I spoke on behalf of the fledgling Pajamas Media (now PJ Media).

For the most part, I have been just another of the media grunts, roaming about, observing the scene that is part social event, part book sales festival, and part opportunity for candidates to show off their speaking skills—an audition, as it were, for whatever office they might aspire to.

Sometimes, it’s the presidency.

It’s pretty much fun, and when Donald Trump is speaking—as he will be this time—he garners more than the usual attention as he always does. It’s standing room only.

But, to be honest, the event doesn’t amount to all that much because it’s a conclave of people who largely agree with each other, applauding each other. At best, you learn a few new things at the margins, maybe make a few new friends or contacts. Nothing wrong with that, but it is what it is.

This time, it’s different. Very different.

The world is aflame—globally and domestically. From Ukraine to Canada to our home front with its open border, drugs, and crime everywhere, runaway inflation, empty food shelves, mandates, masked children, critical race theory, a president who doesn’t seem all there with a vice president whose knowledge of foreign affairs, I believe, is an embarrassment to our country and on and on, there has never, to my knowledge, been a CPAC at a moment remotely like this.

Just as I type this, I am reminded how grave the situation is by something that surfaced only hours ago. A tweet, in response to a supportive tweet for the Ukrainian people from Taiwan’s president, got this reply from the Chinese regime mouthpiece the Global Times:

“Taiwan is eager to grab attention from the Ukraine issue. But there is no dispute over Ukraine’s sovereignty despite disputes on its borders. Taiwan’s sovereignty has never existed. It’s only a matter of time that your secessionist regime will be eradicated.”

Eradicated? Taiwan? The maker of so many of our computer chips. And you thought Ukraine was dicey.

Meanwhile, our own society is more split than in any of our lifetimes. People talk about secession and even civil war.

As I said: CPAC—this time, it’s serious!

As Roger writes, “I hate to seem gloomy because I am by nature an optimist. But I would like to see us all come home from CPAC with genuine thoughts on what to do, not just an autographed copy of someone’s latest conservative book.”

TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE! Awkward: Asked if He Underestimated Putin, Biden Stares Vacantly and Picks His Teeth.

It’s one of the most awkward twenty seconds ever captured on video in a disastrous administration that lurches from one awkward moment to another: when asked “Do you think you may have underestimated Putin?,” Old Joe Biden first continued to stare in the general direction of the question, a slight smirk on his face, expression absolutely unchanged from what it had been before the question was asked. A few seconds later he turned his head to face the camera and, after a few more seconds, grinned sardonically. A few seconds later, he began picking his teeth with his thumbnail, and then grins a bit vacantly before the video mercifully runs out. Amid all the wrong choices, erroneous policies, abject failures, and stupid missteps of this disastrous administration, it was a trivial moment, but it was a telling one.

The pilot light has gone out: Joe Rogan Says He Didn’t Vote for Biden Because He ‘Can’t Talk Right Anymore.’

FREEDOM CONVOY DONORS NAMES PUBLISHED ON GOOGLE MAPS:

Hours after the Google Maps link was posted, the tech giant removed and deleted the post containing all of the pins, citing a violation of the company’s terms of service.

As seen in screenshots of the now-deleted Google Maps post, the pins contained everything from first names and surnames to the comments left by donors, including all of the other particulars that would have identified them as citizens of Ontario.

Following the initial GiveSendGo hack, several journalists attempted to harass people who had donated money to the protest, which was legal at the time. Reporters from Canadian state-media CBC and the Washington Post were among those who solicited comments from donors to ask them why they pitched in.

Related: Um… What? Google Blocks Ads, Labels My Op-Ed on Inflation ‘Dangerous or Derogatory Content.’ “This could be a mistake. But Google has a long and alarming history of blacklisting conservative websites from its search results. And its subsidiary platform, YouTube, commonly demonetizes, restricts, or outright bans right-leaning users. It’s clearly a biased institution, even if subconsciously. More than 90 percent of political donations from Google employees go to Democrats. The company is an echo chamber where left-leaning ideas run unchecked and the few right-leaning employees are sometimes afraid to speak out. There’s almost certainly not some nefarious plot by top Google executives to throttle and ban conservatives en masse. But when you have people who all see the world in a certain way running such an influential platform and making so many subjective decisions, bias is all-but-certain to ensue.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: A Student Sleuth Found Evidence that Our University Practices Reverse Racism. Here’s Why I Advised Him Not to Publish It.