I WASN’T EXPECTING ABC NEWS TO GO FULL MCCARTHYIST, BUT HERE WE ARE: The View: It’s time for the DOJ to investigate Tucker Carlson for Russian propaganda.

Navarro is way beyond criticism. She wants government harassment of dissenters, nothing more or less. The good old days, according to Whoopi.

Carlson’s going to dine out on this clip for days. And he deserves to.

Amanda Carpenter has a piece today about the rash of Putin apologetics in populist media titled, “Russia Doesn’t Need Trolls This Time.” It’s a comforting illusion to believe, as “The View” seemingly does, that someone who would take seriously Russia’s claims about U.S.-made bioweapons in Ukraine could only believe such a thing because they’re on the take. Nonsense. They’re just nationalists who resent Americans’ instinct to favor liberal democracies over autocracies and are doing what they can to get people to question that instinct. When Carpenter says Russia doesn’t need trolls this time, she means Moscow doesn’t need a paid army of Russian sh*tposters posting disinformation a la the 2016 campaign. There are many populist influencers in the U.S. willing to do that for them for free, out of ideological or cultural sympathy:

* * * * * * * *

They’re not free-thinking contrarians. They’re authoritarians. But so is Navarro. Between her and Tucker, only one of them is calling for their political enemies to draw Justice Department scrutiny.

Exit question: If saying something insensitive about the Holocaust and then apologizing repeatedly is worth a two-week suspension from “The View,” how many weeks should you get for unapologetically trying to weaponize the federal government against felony wrongthink in the third degree?

As they say at David Horowitz’s Front Page, “Inside Every Progressive is a Totalitarian Screaming to Get Out.” The women of The View must assume Woody Allen’s The Front had a happy ending.

OKAY, GROOMER: Wisconsin Teachers Instructed to Hide Students’ Gender Identities from Parents.

UKRAINE WAR: The bravest woman in Russia: TV editor runs onto state channel’s news broadcast with sign saying: ‘Stop the war! Don’t believe propaganda! They’re lying to you here!’

Related: Russia Arrests Multiple People for Holding Up Blank Signs.

OKAY, GROOMER: As If: Poll Claims Americans Want Elementary Schoolers Taught About ‘Sexual Orientation’ and ‘Gender Identity.’

21st CENTURY HEADLINES: Drag Queen Scheduled to “Entertain” Democrats at Retreat #Cancelled.

No, he wasn’t cancelled because this is inappropriate and makes the Democrats look like they’re monomaniacally obsessed with gay stuff, which is off-message when they’re trying to project that they’re monomaniacally obsessed with #FightingRussians.

He was cancelled because he had previously called Biden “senile” and a “white supremacist.”

And also noted that Biden as been accused of sexual harassment or sexual assault by eight different women.

We’ve descended into some sort of bizarre hell-world in which a drag queen called “Lady Bunny” is a voice of sanity, to coin an Insta-phrase.

MICHAEL WALSH: The Specter That Haunts America.

A specter is haunting America—the specter of the Democrat Party. Like an evil spirit that cannot be exorcised, the Democrats have been plaguing the United States since Aaron Burr shot and killed Alexander Hamilton in 1804. Ferociously pro-slavery, the Democrats divided the country practically from its inception, blocked the path to abolition and eventually took up arms against the nation after the election of the first Republican president, firing on Fort Sumter and seceding en masse from the Union. And, a week after they had lost that war, one of them assassinated Abraham Lincoln, elevating a Democrat from a Confederate state to the presidency, and plunging the country into more needless turmoil.

* * * * * * * * *

The midterms are still eight months away but Real America is crying out for succor right now. Gasoline, home heating oil, electricity, natural gas—the prices continue to soar, already past the point of recent plausibility and heading into economic terra incognita. Millions of illegal aliens pour across the nearly erased southern border. A befuddled Joe Biden threatens to sleepwalk us into an armed conflict with the ghost of the old Soviet Union in the form of Vladimir Putin’s Russia, and disinformation is rife on both sides of the conflict in the Ukraine. In a parliamentary system, Biden’s government would have fallen right after the debacle in Afghanistan—but barring a miracle we’ve got another three years to suffer.

For just over a year, Americans have watched with admirable patience as their economy collapsed, their legal system was perverted to serve the interests of a few, their nation’s military degraded, and their freedom of speech subverted via the government’s fascistic and unconstitutional co-opting of the social media sites. Meanwhile, woke corporations and a thoroughly compromised media crack down on the commercial and personal privacy of anybody that runs afoul of the New Normal while manic Greens demand a return to the days of three-masted schooners and windmills. Such relentless cultural and economic sabotage would be considered an act of war if done by anyone else—but here it goes by the fellow-traveler names of “dissent,” “patriotism,” and “progressivism.”

Read the whole thing.

LOST DECADE: Taking back the ‘90s.

The ‘90s don’t get a lot of love. The last decade of the 20th century is often seen as a kind of pregnant pause – a political and social interregnum between an event that put an (apparently) full stop on the conflict that had shaped much of the previous century (the Cold War) and one that shifted our gears into a new reality for which we weren’t prepared (the World Trade Center attacks). It was the decade that began with talk about a “peace dividend” and “the End of History,” and ended just as the internet was about to transform the way we read, learned and communicated.

There’s an argument that dividing history up into decades, or even centuries, is an arbitrary activity, shoehorning events and retroactively making judgments about what was important based on hindsight. Writing about “decade-ism” in the Journal of Social History in 1998, Jason Scott Smith said that “the concept of the decade represents thinking about time in a punctuated, discontinuous manner. Discontinuous time encourages viewing history not as a seamless web of events, but as discrete, temporally fragmented snapshots.”

We know now that the Cold War didn’t really go away as much as transform into something baroque, with Russia and China and the West assuming the stance of wary sides in a fight, eyes darting from one opponent to another like the gunfighters at the end of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. (Your politics will help you decide who is which; you might even argue that Europe and America are no longer one, homogenous West, and that the end of the bilateral world is turning the gunfight into a melee.) We also know that terrorism against the West has long roots and precedents, and that 9/11 was mostly an institutional failure of imagination, policy and vigilance. Seen in that light, the ‘90s don’t seem like an interregnum as much as an anxious lull between eruptions.

Read the whole thing.

Related: The Media May Hate Brutal Putin Now, But Gushed Over ‘Mighty’ Soviet Union Then.

Robert Harris nods.

OUT ON A LIMB: The door is closed for Colin Kaepernick.

Starting five years ago, the NFL wrongfully colluded against Colin Kaepernick. Five years of collusion later, the NFL has won.

It’s over for Colin Kaepernick. There’s no way that any team will sign him at this point, not after he has gone half of a decade without playing football of any kind.

Yes, he posted a workout video on Thursday. Sure, Schefty quoted an anonymous source who says Kaepernick is in the best shape of his life. (It’s unclear why anonymity is needed for that specific piece of information; it’s hardly a state secret.) It’s still not happening.

I’m a realist. The ability of the NFL to shun Kaepernick for five years slams the door on any effort to return now. If no team was willing to sign him in 2017, 2018, or 2019, no one will be signing him three years later.

It’s not happening. Why would anyone want a quarterback who hasn’t played in five years, especially in light of the inevitably hostile reaction from 30 percent of the fan base if he’s signed at this point?

Is it wrong that he was frozen out for so many years? Yes. Were some in the media complicit in spreading bullshit narratives that allowed teams to justify ignoring him? Absolutely. Regardless, five years removed from his decision to opt out of the last year of his 49ers contract — at a time when the 49ers otherwise would have cut him — it’s over. It’s done. The door has been closed in his face for five years. It’s not opening now.

Which “bullsh*t” narratives is Mike Florio speaking of? Kaepernick was his own worst enemy if he actually wanted to remain in the NFL, but is an absolutely brilliant self-promoter, leading to multi-million dollar contracts with Nike and Disney. Of course, it’s rather understandable why the NFL would be reluctant to have the man who ended his career as Blaine Gabbert’s backup return:

It’s also quite understandable why Kaepernick doesn’t want to return. Going from woke superstar to riding the pine as a backup would be a rather ignominious end of his anti-American and anti-NFL activism.

Related:

● Nike would very much like to keep its slave labor, thank you.

● The neoliberal counter-revolution. “Does anyone seriously believe the American establishment — Walmart, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, the trustees of Ivy League universities, the major sports leagues, even Brooks Brothers, for God’s sake — would sign on to a movement that genuinely threatened its material interests?”

● From America’s Newspaper of Record: Man Who Agrees With The Media, Universities, Corporations, And Hollywood Thinks He’s Part Of The Resistance.

MARKER LAID DOWN: Biden pledges: We won’t fight a war against Russia in Ukraine.

You have his word as a Biden.

HEY, YOU CAN NEVER BE TOO CAREFUL: Florida man accused of calling 911 to have meth tested for authenticity, authorities say.

THE LESS YOU KNOW, THE BETTER YOU SLEEP:

In its September 2009 GQ carried an interesting article by Scott Anderson on the September 1999 apartment bombings in Russia that left hundreds dead and led to Vladimir Putin’s rise to power. The piece profiled former Russian FSB officer Mikhail Trepashkin and collected evidence suggesting that the bombings were perpetrated by the FSB rather than by Chechen terrorists.

It was the kind of intriguing investigative piece that most publications would have featured prominently, but GQ buried it. Purchasing a copy of the magazine, I first spent several minutes trying to find the issue’s table of contents (I gave up), and then the article itself, afraid I’d blown $4.50 on the wrong issue of the magazine. I found the article at page 246 of the September issue. NPR explained the mystery behind GQ’s treatment of the story.

* * * * * * * *

Satter’s National Review article “The unsolved mystery behind the act of terror that brought Vladimir Putin to power” provides a good summary. David Pryce-Jones reviewed the book for National Review in “Russia moves toward a reckoning.”

Related: Vladimir Putin — KGB Agent: New video by historian Mark Felton.

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:  Former Democrat senator complains Americans ‘got used to’ cheap gas, so that’s why they’re blaming Biden.

[ABC’s This Week] Guest host Jonathan Karl started off sharing the results of the network’s new poll, which found an “overwhelming” majority of Americans support banning Russian oil after Russia invaded Ukraine, but they also blamed President Biden for skyrocketing gas prices.

“Our new poll, had some interesting numbers, first of all, it showed an overwhelming support for the ban on Russian oil, 77% support it, even if it means, the poll question, even if it means higher gas prices here at home. But take a look at this other question we asked, which is, ‘Biden’s handling of gas prices, do you approve?’ Seventy percent disapprove so, in other words, ban Russian oil even if it means higher gas prices, but we’re going to blame Biden,” Karl said.

Former Democrat senator from North Dakota, Heidi Heitkamp, dismissed the poll’s results as just politics and poor messaging from the White House.

* * * * * * * *

“Can I just say that is an artificially low price you’re starting from and when you do inflation adjustment, this isn’t the highest price we’ve had in the last 20 years. In fact, George Herbert Walker Bush under the Bush administration we had gas prices, inflation adjusted over $5,” she claimed.

“But we’re shocked because we got used to $2 gas, and that’s the problem!” she argued, as NewsBusters’ Kevin Tober highlighted.

In 2018, while Heitkamp was running for a second term that she would ultimately lose, she sang a bit of a different tune:

Heitkamp said in a Wednesday morning appearance on CNBC that she believes prices could actually be driven higher if not for domestic capacity.

“I think we would see shortages drive those prices up. Anything that encourages the growth of our domestic drilling industry is good for North Dakota, but I think ultimately it is good for the country when we’re looking at energy security,” she said.

“Unexpectedly,” since leaving office, America’s energy security doesn’t seem like much of a priority for Heitkamp.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: The cost of gasoline the year you started driving.

Although this moment is amusing:

1979

Absolute gas price: $0.90

Inflation-adjusted price: $3.38 (#15 most expensive year in 85-year span)

The Iranian Revolution began in January 1978, disrupting the country’s oil exportation process. Availability dropped as a consequence, but in reality, Iranian oil exportation only dropped by a small percentage. Nevertheless, the panic was enough to send gas prices around the globe skyrocketing once again. America was, for the second time in a decade, faced with high prices, long waits at the gas station, and extreme inflation. In November, the global situation worsened as the 444-day Iranian hostage crisis began.

1980

Absolute gas price: $1.25

 Inflation-adjusted price: $4.14 (#5 most expensive year in 85-year span)

After the oil crisis of 1979, gas prices surged once more in 1980, jumping from $0.90 to $1.25 per gallon as global oil prices peaked. Jimmy Carter’s presidency was marked by inflation, gas shortages, and international crises, and despite his 1979 “crisis of confidence” speech, Carter was defeated by Ronald Reagan.

The “despite” referencing Carter’s infamous “malaise” speech is a nice touch. No word yet if Fox Butterfield contributed to the above list.

RUSSIA THREATENS TO MAKE EXTERNAL DEBT PAYMENTS IN ROUBLES: “Moscow is scheduled to make a combined $117mn in interest payments this Wednesday on two dollar-denominated bonds, according to JPMorgan. Neither bond’s contracts gives Russia the option of paying in roubles, according to the Wall Street bank. The latest warning to foreign bondholders ratchets up the chances the country will default on its debt for the first time since the Russian financial crisis in 1998, as its financial system comes under heavy strain from the measures western governments have taken following the invasion.”

WAPO COLUMNIST SAYS “FANS OF FLORIDA’S ‘DON’T SAY GAY’ BILL HAVE A NEW FAVORITE WORD: ‘GROOMING'” … and I think someone hit a nerve:

You can always tell how insular a person has become in their politics when a term that has been used regularly regarding a topic that has been in the news for years strikes them as something “new.”

“Fans of Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill have a new favorite word: ‘grooming'”

Of course, people who don’t share columnist Monica Hesse’s Bryn Mawr value system have actually been using the word for some time.

Okay, I shouldn’t be so hard on Bryn Mawr. After all, it has a politically diverse student body with only around 42% identifying as “liberal” and the rest identifying as Marxists.

Read the whole thing.

Evergreen:

TOM BRADY UN-RETIRES:

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): A friend comments: “Inflation is so bad Tom Brady had to go back to work.”

STACY MCCAIN: ‘Simply Not True.’

Joe Biden believes he is honest, and that anyone who disagrees with him is lying, or is ignorant, or has been deceived by liars.

So deeply convinced is Joe Biden of his own honesty that he thinks his very name is synonymous with truth-telling:

“I give you my word as a Biden: I will never stoop to President Trump’s level.”
— Nov. 20, 2019

“I give you my word as a Biden: If I am elected president I will do everything in my power to protect our children from gun violence.”
— March 10, 2020

“I give you my word as a Biden: When I’m president, I will lead with science, listen to the experts and heed their advice, and always tell you the truth.”
— March 18, 2020

When I first noticed him using this “my word as a Biden” phrase during the 2020 campaign, I was puzzled. Has the Biden family been so prominently associated with honesty that when Joe says this, most Americans say, “Well, that settles it”? Of course not. In fact, Biden’s first presidential campaign, in 1988, collapsed in disgrace specifically because of Joe’s dishonesty, when he was caught plagiarizing others — most notably British Labour leader Ne0l Kinnock — in his speeches[.]

Related: It’s the return of Creepy Joe:

In light of Biden’s accumulated baggage, this tweet seems like quite an unforced error by whoever is running the Democrats’ official Twitter account:

ROGER KIMBALL: Kamala Harris laughs at a war.

Do you know the word “battologist”? According to the excellent Dictionary of Early English, it means “one that endlessly and uselessly repeats the same thing.” (According to Herodotus, there was a Spartan named “Battus” who stuttered, hence the word. But I digress.)

That presser got worse, much worse. In response to an earnest question to about whether the United States was willing to make “a specific allocation for Ukrainian refugees,” Harris laughed, looked at President Duda, and said, “A friend in need is a friend indeed.”

Then came the cackles. Painful, what?

That was Thursday. On Friday, she had moved on to Romania. Another presser, this time with the Romanian president Klaus Iohannis. A reporter asked, “How long should Americans expect — how long should we be bracing for — this historic inflation and some unprecedented gas prices?”

An excellent question! This is what the vice-president, she who is a heartbeat away from the most powerful office in the world, did in response to the question. First, she looked pleadingly at President Iohannis. Maybe he would save her? Just a little boost, a small lifeline?

He smiled back, but no.

Of course, the DNC-MSM will attempt to save Harris from herself: VP Gaffe Watch: Nets Hide Kamala’s Bizarre Laughing Fit While Discussing Refugees.

And of course, the old fallback: The View: Criticism of Kamala’s Laughing is ‘Based in Racism…Misogyny.’

RIP: William Hurt Dies: Oscar-Winning Actor For Kiss Of The Spider Woman Was 71.

YOU KNOW YOU’RE OVER THE TARGET WHEN YOU START RECEIVING FLAK: How Fact-Finding Fauci Led To My Cancellation At Forbes.

20 MINUTES INTO THE FUTURE: Biden warns Democrats it will be a ‘sad two years’ if Republicans take control of Congress.

As always, don’t get cocky during the run-up.

QUESTION ASKED: What Have Two Years of ‘Two Weeks to Slow the Spread’ Taught Us?

OUT ON A LIMB: No, Don’t Use A ‘Morality Pill’ To Stop The Covid-19 Pandemic.

I have updated the headline to more clearly state my position, as opposed to the position being discussed. The original headline was “Could A ‘Morality Pill’ Help Stop The Covid-19 Pandemic?” The article has received some recent attention in February 2022 more than a year after the original publication, and some readers had contacted me requesting clarification of my own views. As I mentioned in the original piece, I regard the idea of a “morality pill” as both unrealistic and undesirable. Instead, I greatly favor “discussion, debate, and rational persuasion” to decide public policy.)

As the SARS-CoV-2 virus continues to kill thousands of Americans each week, bioethicist Parker Crutchfield has suggested a controversial approach to battling the pandemic — namely a “morality pill.” Specifically, he suggests that widespread administration of psychoactive drugs could provide “moral enhancement” that would make people more likely to adhere to social norms such as wearing masks and adhering to social distancing guidelines.

Crutchfield — an Associate Professor of Medical Ethics, Humanities and Law at Western Michigan University — acknowledges that the idea is “far out” and controversial. But he does note that well-known chemicals, such as oxytocin and psilocybin (the active ingredient in “magic mushrooms”) can lower aggression and increase empathy towards others, and thus potentially “boost” our “cooperative, pro-social behavior.”

Anthony Burgess and Stanley Kubrick intended the Ludovico Technique to be a warning, not a how-to guide for a safer society.

I ALWAYS KNEW THE LITTLE BASTARD WAS SECRETLY A PUTIN STOOGE:

And all that lasagna? Clearly it’s a callback to Mussolini as well.

Earlier: Let’s Discuss What’s Happening in Russia: “To put it simply, it’s going full fascist. Authorities launched a propaganda campaign to gain popular support for their invasion of Ukraine and they’re getting lots of it. You can see ‘Z’ on these guys’ clothes. What does it mean?”

QUESTION ASKED: Is Russia going to lose?

One way to answer the question in the headline is “It already has.” Even to a rank amateur like me, it was clear by *day three* that Putin was facing a strategic debacle. He misjudged Ukraine’s desire and ability to resist, he misjudged the strength of his military, and he misjudged the west’s willingness to paralyze Russia’s economy with sanctions. “No Russian leader since Tsar Nicholas II has done his country so much harm, so fast, as Vladimir Putin,” David Frum tweeted a few days ago, marveling at how diminished Russian power has been by Putin’s folly in the span of a few weeks.

Nothing that happens in Ukraine from this point will undo that. It’s a fiasco.

But a strategic defeat is distinct from defeat on the battlefield. Even optimists have assumed that Russia would eventually brute-force its way to controlling Kiev and other major Ukrainian cities. The “real” fight for Ukraine would come after that when Russia’s occupying forces and Ukraine’s insurgency would wage a war of attrition. Eventually Moscow would run out of patience and withdraw, but “eventually” could take months. Years. Decades, conceivably.

But what if the optimists were too pessimistic? What if Russia is facing near-term defeat on the battlefield as well?

Realistically, there are three ways in which the Russian army might lose:

Russia’s quagmire is what happens when generals are too terrified to tell their boss the truth about the quality of the soldiers, their equipment, their chances, etc. Or as Stalin biographer Stephen Kotkin tells the New Yorker, “Was Iraq the way it was because of Saddam, or was Saddam the way he was because of Iraq? In other words, there’s the personality, which can’t be denied, but there are also structural factors that shape the personality. One of the arguments I made in my Stalin book was that being the dictator, being in charge of Russian power in the world in those circumstances and in that time period, made Stalin who he was and not the other way around…You have an autocrat in power—or even now a despot—making decisions completely by himself. Does he get input from others? Perhaps. We don’t know what the inside looks like. Does he pay attention? We don’t know. Do they bring him information that he doesn’t want to hear? That seems unlikely. Does he think he knows better than everybody else? That seems highly likely. Does he believe his own propaganda or his own conspiratorial view of the world? That also seems likely. These are surmises. Very few people talk to Putin, either Russians on the inside or foreigners.”