UKRAINE FORMING FOREIGN LEGION WHILE RUSSIA OFFERS TALKS, THREATENS NUKES.

Related: Demented Putin Angry The Invasion Going Slow Adds Nukes To Possible Attacks.

FRANCE MOVES TO OUTLAW PRO-TERROR PALESTINIAN GROUPS. They respond that calling for murdering Jews is a “human right.”

CRISES BY DESIGN: Biden pauses new oil and gas leases amid legal battle over cost of climate change.

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

CLAUDIA ROSETT: Ukraine in the Colosseum.

It’s not as if the U.S. and its NATO allies have failed to react to Vladimir Putin’s amplifying threats and current onslaught against Ukraine. We’ve seen months of frantic U.S.-led diplomacy, European visits to the Kremlin, speeches in Munich, additional U.S. troops dispatched to reinforce NATO, UN Security Council meetings and new sanctions on top of old sanctions.

Nonetheless, it’s hard to escape the sense that the mighty democracies of the West are not so much standing with Ukraine as sitting like spectators at the Colosseum — watching Ukraine do single combat against Russia.

Read the whole thing.

REPORT: Kremlin website is down: Russian state websites including media watchdog crash and TV channels ‘are hacked to broadcast Ukrainian songs.’

DISPATCHES FROM THE GAZPACHO POLICE: Marjorie Taylor Greene addresses white supremacist conference ahead of CPAC.

RICHARD FERNANDEZ: Putin’s Failure. “Ukraine has not won; not in the military sense. It has lost territory, suffered significant losses to soldier and civilian, endured massive property damage. But crucially it has not lost — and that may be enough. Attention is now turning to the possible danger that may attend Putin’s fall. While he appears to remain firmly in power, the ex-chekist cannot but be weakened by the massive failure of his gamble…The crisis in Ukraine, while not over, is likely to evolve into a crisis in Russia. We shall soon see who is more to be feared: a Putin in Kyiv or a Putin raging in the bunker.”

AMAZING: Kyiv Is Still Holding out, and Putin Is Reportedly Furious.

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.

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.

• 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.

• 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?

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.

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

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.

THE NATURAL PROGRESSION FROM “DEFUND THE POLICE:” Poll: Majority Feels Safer ‘Knowing There’s A Gun In The House.’

Now with increasingly bipartisan support!

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.’”

THE POWER LINE WEEK IN PICTURES: U-Cranial Inversion Edition.

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:

DISPATCHES FROM THE SOCIAL MEDIA VIRUS: I’ve been waiting 15 years for Facebook to die. I’m more hopeful than ever.

Fifteen years ago, it was safe to make a Facebook-MySpace bridge that would let you leave MySpace but stay in touch with your friends there by scraping your MySpace inbox and moving the waiting messages to your Facebook inbox. Try to build one of those bridges today – blasting an escape tunnel through Facebook’s walled garden – and Facebook will sue you until the rubble bounces.

But high switching costs have their limits. If you make your service terrible enough, a certain number of users will find the cost of switching preferable to the pain of staying. And as users leave, network effects start to work in reverse: though every user that joins makes your service more valuable, every user that leaves makes the service less valuable. If you’re only on Facebook to stay in touch with a small group of friends, each one of those friends who departs makes it easier for you to make the jump, too. And once you go, it’s even easier for the rest of the group to bail.

This is very bad news for Facebook. After years of slowing US growth, Facebook just experienced its first-ever US shrinkage, which precipitated a $230bn stock crash, the largest in global corporate history.

Though most of Facebook’s users are global, its US users generate far more profit than users in the rest of the world. Losing a US user is expensive. Even more important: the US is Facebook’s home base, and its US user base is its main bargaining chip in resisting US regulation, and in securing US support in its regulatory battles abroad.

Speaking of regulatory battles abroad: Facebook is on the brink of having its business model declared illegal under the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Fending off that scenario will depend on vast capital expenditures and friendly European regulators, and Facebook’s running short on both. Oh, and Europeans are Facebook’s second most valuable users.

Abandoning the decentralized Blogosphere for the walled gardens of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube was a huge mistake, particularly for conservatives. Somebody should write a book about the reasons why.

COVERING THE IMPORTANT STORIES: Applebee’s apologizes and blames CNN for placement of very light-hearted ad that aired during live coverage of the Ukraine invasion — and says its pulled ads from them.

OLD AND BUSTED: Follow the Science.

The New Hotness? Salvage the midterms! We found the science behind Democrats’ COVID flip-flop.

If President Joe Biden joins Democratic governors from around the nation in backing off COVID restrictions at his first State of the Union address next week, we have found the scientific study that informed this completely objective and not in any way politically motivated decision.

Impact Research, a Democratic polling firm, published a memo yesterday calling on Democrats to “declare the crisis phase of COVID over and push for feeling and acting normal.”

Hence this headline: New CDC Guidance Ends Mask Recommendation for Most U.S. Counties.

FEDS: SAYING YOU’RE ‘COLORBLIND’ IS RACIST.

A newly revealed federal diversity program greatly expands earlier critical race training by creating a whole new minefield of “microaggressions” that some could believe are stereotypes and racism.

In the training package used at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, for example, offering a black student a basketball should be considered offensive.

Not only are federal workers urged to consider what they say, but also how their comments are received. In one chart, a white male is shown saying he is “colorblind.” The black woman shown beside, however, takes as an insult that the white is denying her “racial/cultural being.”

So Kafkatrapping, in other words.

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Scientists ‘should not be immune from critique:’ Professor details ‘Darwinian racism’ and its link to Nazism.

WAS IT OVER WHEN RON DESANTIS BOMBED PEARL HARBOR? Libs Blame Ukraine on… Ron DeSantis?!?