HMM: Russia-Ukraine live updates: Russians frustrated by lack of momentum. I hope this is true, and I think that it probably is, but stay tuned.
Related: Poland and Sweden refuse to play Russia in World Cup qualifiers.
Archive for 2022
February 26, 2022
“NECESSARY” BUT NOT POPULAR: TurboTax Deluxe 2021 Tax Software, Federal and State Tax Return with Federal E-file [Amazon Exclusive] [PC Download]. #CommissionEarned
LEE SMITH: Ukraine’s Deadly Gamble. By tying itself to a reckless and dangerous America, the Ukrainians made a blunder that client states will study for years to come.
THE PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE THAT WILL NEVER DIE: Long-Enduring COBOL May Still Have a Shelf Life.
NARRATOR VOICE: IT WON’T: Scoop: CNN to dull its liberal edge.
Under new chief Chris Licht, CNN will dial down the prime-time partisanship and double down on the network’s news-gathering muscle, top sources tell me.
Why it matters: Ratings are secondary to credibility, in the view of Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, who’s taking over CNN.
Jeff Zucker’s successor at the CNN helm will be Licht — showrunner of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” and a popular, pioneering producer who knows his way around America’s top control rooms.
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The selection of Licht, a regular at Zaslav summer parties in the Hamptons, was reported first by Puck News’ Dylan Byers. Licht will be named next week.
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Licht — CBS’ EVP of Special Programming — succeeded with three very different programs: Colbert rose on his watch to become the most-watched network late-night show, with live shows for big news … “CBS This Morning” got a ratings jolt when he was E.P. … and he was co-creator and original E.P. of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
As Joe Concha of The Hill tweets, “if you believe that the former executive producer of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and MSNBC’s Morning Joe is going to steer the network away from prime-time partisanship given that track record… OK then.“
IT’S COME TO THIS: China shared U.S. intelligence on Ukraine crisis with Russia.
China’s government took U.S. intelligence provided to convince Beijing to join American-led efforts to head off a military attack on Ukraine and shared it with Russia, according to a person familiar with the activity.
Intelligence-sharing with a major U.S. adversary is unusual but was part of repeated diplomatic efforts by the Biden administration to gain support from China in dissuading Russian President Vladimir Putin from invading Ukraine.
However, the Chinese government repeatedly rebuffed the efforts and instead turned over the intelligence data to Moscow, an indication of the growing ties between Beijing and Moscow.
Other than half the country, who could have expected that?
SPACE STORIES: The inside scoop on Apollo 10’s infamous floating turd.
THE CBC MORPHED INTO THE BABYLON BEE SO SLOWLY, I HARDLY EVEN NOTICED: The trucks have left Ottawa, but ‘phantom honking’ lingers for many downtown.
YOU DON’T NEED A WEATHERMAN TO SEE WHICH WAY THE WIND BLOWS: Germany OKs weapons for Ukraine in major shift on military aid.
Related: “Something is off with Putin.”
ROGER SIMON: Fake ‘Environmentalism’ Fueled the Ukraine War.
It’s tempting to laugh at Biden’s climate czar and devoted private jet customer John Kerry who complained to BBC Arabic that the Ukraine War could “distract the world from the climate change crisis and produce ‘massive emissions’ that will negatively impact the globe.”
Only it’s actually tragic—and not for the environment.
The truth is that people like Kerry and many of his colleagues and predecessors who have been obsessed with the same supposedly imminent ecological disaster literally for decades now, are to blame as much as anyone—with the exception of Vladimir Putin, of course—for the carnage in Ukraine.
This environmental obsession obviously swept up our current president to such a degree that from the minute he was inaugurated he worked to reverse the American energy independence achieved under the Trump administration.
He succeeded and then some in less than a year.
Result: The United States imports oil to the tune of millions of dollars a day, including from Russia (even as it invades Ukraine). As Bloomberg reported last year, Russia provides more oil to the United States than any other country, except Canada. Around 20 million barrels per month.
This makes the so-called sanctions a pathetic sideshow—laughable, really.
In September of 2019, after CNN’s seven hour “climate change town hall,” Bryan Preston wrote, “Seriously, if you see all of the above — which is just a sample — and vote for any of these people for any office at any level, it’s on you. If you like Venezuela, voting for any of them will bring you a whole lot of Venezuela.”
And as Kate of Small Dead Animals wrote after the CNN horror show, “Don’t make the mistake of thinking they don’t mean it.”
Flashbacks:
● Aren’t California’s High Gas Prices What The Left Have Wanted?
● NBC, the Washington Post, and the New York Times in lockstep call for higher gas taxes.
● 2008 L.A. Times headline: “The joy of $8 gas.”
Exit quote: “Under my plan, energy costs will necessarily skyrocket…”
In other words, Obama administration retreads are following the same playbook as the original Obama administration: “We’re going to keep at it to ensure the American people are paying their fair share for gas,” is the perfect Kinsley Gaffe for an Obama administration retread like Biden: As Steven Chu, Obama’s then-incoming energy secretary, told the Wall Street Journal in the fall of 2008: “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.”
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.
“Yep,” Glenn added in late 2019. “You know who did do these things? Obama. You know who supports these things now? Democrats.”
Related: Biden tormented by Republican guerrilla campaign and ‘I did it’ stickers.
Also: 100Pcs I Did That Biden Funny Car Stickers. #Resist #CommissionEarned
THIS DOES NOT SURPRISE ME: Headphones change listeners’ perceptions, judgements, behaviors.
TAR, FEATHERS: Rochester Michigan schools monitor parents’ social media posts, twice contacted critics’ employers.
A lawsuit filed on May 3, 2021, claims Dinverno advocated on two separate Facebook groups to reopen schools in-person: “RCS Parents for In-Person Education” and “Conservative Parents for Rochester.” Dinverno asked other parents for video testimony of how virtual school was hurting kids.
In a February 3 deposition, Superintendent Robert Shaner admitted he called the parent’s employer over a parent’s social media post encouraging protesting private homes over virtual learning because he was “scared.”
Shaner said he believing the woman had submitted a written threat to the district, although never asked further details. He defended the district’s surveillance of parent social media accounts in the deposition.
“Yeah, we value the input of all parents, and we certainly want to keep our thumb on the pulse of the community, so we monitor social media very closely on all fronts and make sure we’re responsive to the community,” Shane told Deborah Gordon, Dinverno’s attorney.
“Yeah, so again, I just want to be clear about the social media,” Shane said. “We do watch it and try to make sure we know what’s going on in our community, but that’s not the only place that we get information on social media. Believe it or not, there are parents that support what we are doing, and they often share what’s going on in social media with us as well…”.
The lawsuit alleges that RCS public relations members Amy DiCresce and Lori Grein were assigned to compile a dossier on district parents’ social media posts and comments critical of the school district, which were circulated to school officials.
Gordon told the News that the school spent taxpayer money to surveil parent’s social media posts and gather personal information, including place of employment, names of children, and the schools they attend.
Leftists watch The Lives of Others for tips on efficient government and education.
NEW YORK POST EDITORIAL: Sleepy Joe must stop dreaming & face facts.
Most days, President Biden doesn’t seem like he’s residing on this planet, much less in this country. But on the eve of Tuesday’s State of the Union address, if he really wants to try to salvage his administration, if he really wants to help America, if he really wants to raise our country’s standing in the world against increasing threats — then he needs to stop chasing fantasies and focus on reality.
Stop spinning yarns about the Green New Deal and tell your party the truth. Without energy independence, the poor pay more, the economy suffers and our enemies are emboldened.
Look at what has happened in Germany. Radicals shut down actual clean energy in the form of nuclear power, with vague promises of some greener future. But solar, wind . . . none of these come close to the demands of a modern economy. So Germany was forced to turn to Russia for more of its needs, allowing Vladimir Putin to hold it hostage.
Much the same is happening here. When you cancel pipelines and stop fracking, you’re not saving the environment. We just end up burning more coal and oil, at greater cost. Plus we are more beholden to Russia and the Middle East.
But because the Democrats — and the “green” activists — are beholden to Russia and the Middle East, he can’t say that.
THE NATURAL PROGRESSION FROM “DEFUND THE POLICE:” Poll: Majority Feels Safer ‘Knowing There’s A Gun In The House.’
Now with increasingly bipartisan support!
THINGS AREN’T GOING AS PLANNED FOR VLAD: Kazakhstan to Putin: Pound sand. “Vladimir Putin’s miscalculations in Ukraine have multiplied in the last two days. In the first place, the Russian army appears to be struggling to overcome the unexpectedly fierce resistance from fully mobilized Ukrainians, despite massive numerical and technological advantages. At the same time, allies whom Putin assiduously courted over the last several years have done an abrupt about-face, blasting Putin publicly over his naked aggression in Europe. None of these backfires is more surprising than in Kazakhstan. Putin just got done rescuing President Kasym-Zhomart Tokayev from a serious uprising six weeks ago, sending Russian army formations to put down demonstrators in Almaty. With his invasion bogging down, Putin asked Tokayev for more troops to support the Ukraine invasion. Not only did Tokayev refuse, he went further in refusing to recognize the ‘independent’ states Putin set up in the Donbas.”
Astonishing the world with their ingratitude. Cynical me says that it’s going even worse for Putin than we know, but that the regional players know it.
IT’S COME TO THIS: NPR proffers “5 ways to cope with the stressful news cycle.”
As Mary Katharine Ham tweets in response, “Ukrainian ladies out there yelling at Russian soldiers to put seeds in their pockets for when they die in the dirt and we’re like ‘I need 3 hrs of self care to recover from the video I saw of a Ukrainian lady yelling at Russian soldiers.’”
STILL POPULAR: Balance Exercises for Seniors: Easy to Perform Fall Prevention Workouts to Improve Stability and Posture. #CommissionEarned
YOU DON’T SAY: Russia’s Energy Dominance Ties West’s Hands in Ukraine War. “Even as sanctions are being imposed, the same countries doing the sanctioning are continuing to import a large proportion of their energy from Russia every day, which is in turn tying their hands in their ability to hit Moscow where it hurts most.”
DEAL OF THE DAY: Den Haven Large 71 Inch Barbeque Grill Cover – Outdoor Charbroil, Gas & Coal Grill Cover. #CommissionEarned
ANTI-NUCLEAR BIAS OF UN & IPCC IS ROOTED IN COLD WAR FEARS OF ATOMIC AND POPULATION BOMBS:
One year later, an enterprising Sierra Club activist preyed upon fears of fall-out to kill a nuclear plant in northern California. His allies came to fear that infinite nuclear energy would result in overpopulation.
“It’d be little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy,” wrote anti-nuclear leader Amory Lovins, “because of what we would do with it.”
Neo-Malthusian conservationists often hid their motivations. When asked in the mid-1990s if he had been worried about nuclear accidents, Sierra Club anti-nuclear activist Martin Litton replied, “No, I really didn’t care because there are too many people anyway … I think that playing dirty if you have a noble end is fine.”
The reason the neo-Malthusians had to attack nuclear power is because it undermined their case that the world was on the brink of resource scarcity and environmental degradation from overpopulation. Infinite nuclear energy meant infinite fertilizer, freshwater, and food — and a radically reduced environmental footprint.
And so they grabbed on to the fall-out scare pioneered by Lapp. “[A] million people die in the Northern Hemisphere now, because of plutonium from atmospheric [weapons] testing,” claimed Sierra Club’s Executive Director.
Others invented problems. In 1971, the physicist John Holdren made the pseudoscientific claim that “the second law of thermodynamics and heat transfer theory put an upper limit on society’s use of energy.”
Notes historian Thomas Wellock, “Holdren’s thermodynamic arguments did not single out nuclear power as the chief problem,” but “they reduced nuclear power to just another problematic energy source.”
Two years later, Holdren became an advocate of nuclear disarmament, low-energy living, and renewables. His 1977 textbook, Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment, proposed international control of “the development, administration, conservation and distribution of all natural resources.”
Read the whole thing.
Earlier: The Far Left is Making Teens Miserable Over the Imminent Destruction of the World.
A statement that’s been true since about 1968 or so.
OUT ON A LIMB:
FIGHT THE POWER, STICK IT TO THE MAN: University leadership told the student newspaper to stop printing. Students fought back and won.
ro-free speech campus activism at Texas A&M University defeated the university president’s attempt to cease the print production of The Battalion, a student-run newspaper.
The Battalion reported Feb. 11 that university President M. Katherine Banks ordered the publication to stop printing physical copies of the paper at the end of the 2022 spring semester.
According to the student publication, the outlet would then be transitioned to operate under a newly anticipated Department of Journalism, effectively blurring the line on whether or not the group would retain its resources and independence as a student organization status.
The Battalion is a 129-year-old campus institution that first began printing in 1893. The paper introduced an online presence in 1997, choosing to conduct business on both platforms to honor both innovation and tradition.
Throughout its history, however, the paper has never operated under the thumb of university oversight. All publication decisions have routinely been made by the editor-in-chief.
The Battalion further reported that declining the university leadership’s Feb. 10 directive to conjoin with the journalism department may strip the group of university resources such as funding and office space – two criteria critical to operating a student newsroom.
However, student activism and vocal opposition led to university administrators declaring the new plans void.
Nice to see student activism in support of free speech instead of censorship.