As the war in Ukraine pushed into its seventh day on Wednesday, Russian forces captured the strategically important hub of Kherson, Ukrainian officials said, making it the first major city to be overcome by President Vladimir V. Putin’s forces since the invasion began last Thursday.
Russian forces had encircled the city, said Igor Kolykhaev, Kherson’s mayor, and after days of intense fighting, Ukrainian forces retreated toward the nearby city of Mykolaiv.
“There is no Ukrainian Army here,” he said in an interview. “The city is surrounded.” Just hours earlier, Ukrainian officials had said that the municipal government was still in place, and the mayor had said Kherson was “waiting for a miracle.”
About 10 armed Russian officers, including the Russian commander, had entered city hall, Mr. Kolykhaev said, and had plans to establish a Russian administrative center there.
The fall of Kherson — a city of 300,000 people, northwest of the Crimean peninsula — is strategically significant because it would allow the Russians to control more of Ukraine’s southern coastline and to push west toward the city of Odessa.
Below is an overview of the situation, as of today, helpfully provided by British Intelligence.
Kherson is at the bottom left of the Russian-occupied area.
A couple of things to take note of. First, Kherson was not defended in strength by the Ukrainian army. That was a good decision because Kherson is away from the center of gravity of the war that lies around Kiev. Taking Kherson does give Russia access to lines of communication crossing the Dnieper River and opens the route to Odessa. Second, I think we’re beginning to see an outline of what Russia sees as the endgame. The “breakaway” regions of Donetsk and Luhansk have expanded to give control of the Sea of Azov and a large part of the Black Sea coast to Russia.
The surrender of Kherson has to be seen as expected. It will be disheartening to some Ukrainians. Kherson has a population of about 300,000, and it is 70 percent Ukrainian. If an insurgency spawns there, the Russians will not be able to hold the city. Its loss, however, is more critical to what happens at the cease-fire negotiations than it is to what is happening outside Kiev.
Article by Vasko Kohlmayer in The American Thinker
‘Madman Putin’: The Globalists’ Misinformation Play
Ever since Russia’s
invasion of Ukraine, the western public has been carpet bombed with the
claim that Russian president Vladimir Putin is some sort of unhinged
madman. This notion is being feverishly spread by the establishment and
those in its pay: the political class, the media and the commentariat,
career diplomats and technocrats as well as those connected to the
security and intelligence communities.
The most remarkable thing about the Mad Vlad claim is that it is obviously false.
Whatever
Vladimir Putin may be, he is certainly no irrational madman. This much
should be obvious to everyone with the eyes to see.
A
former KGB operative, Vladimir Putin is a willy person of demonstrated
ability. After all, he managed to bring control and order to a vast
country which was largely in disarray when he took it over at the age of
48. He adroitly managed to keep himself in power for over two decades
while navigating and overcoming a number of crises and challenges along
the way. Through it all, he has shown himself to be intelligent,
steel-willed, calculating, shrewd, self-controlled, determined, cunning
and patient.
These are hardly the qualities of a lunatic.
We have dealt with Putin for 22 years and during that whole time no
one seriously suggested or maintained that he was crazy. Quite to the
contrary, for almost a decade after his ascent he was viewed as a
capable man of considerable talents.
For years the Western
establishment considered Putin a “man with whom we could do business.”
He was seen as “liberal, humane, and decent European.” He was described as a person of “’alert, controlled poise’ and ‘well-briefed acuity,’ who was open to anything, even Russia joining NATO.”
And yet less than a week ago, on the day
he invaded Ukraine, Vladimir Putin was nearly unanimously declared –
contrary to all evidence – a “madman” by members of the Western
establishment.
The question is this: Why did they decide to
suddenly gaslight and brainwash people with such a patent lie that so
obviously contravenes reality?
They did this to hide and conceal the gargantuan blunder they have committed over Ukraine.
By convincing the public that Putin is a madman, they can portray his
move on Ukraine as an irrational, unexpected, impulsive and
unjustifiable act of an unbalanced mind.
Nothing could be further
from the truth. Putin’s move was not irrational, impulsive or
unjustifiable. And it was certainly not unexpected.
For years
Putin had warned that inclusion of Ukraine in NATO was a red line for
Russia. It should not be difficult to understand his position. It is not
unreasonable for Russia to object to the presence of what it perceives
to be a hostile military alliance on its border with a country that has
historically been either part of Russia or within its sphere of
influence. Russia does not want to allow such a threat to its security
for similar reasons the United States would not allow Russia to build a
military base in Cuba.
In their drive to implement a New World
Order, however, Western globalists have been dismissive of Russia’s
security concerns. Russia continued its strenuous objections and warned
that if they were not taken seriously, they would take the necessary
action to keep Ukraine out of NATO. The last time Russia made this clear
was in November of last year.
“On 30 November 2021, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that an
expansion of NATO's presence in Ukraine, especially the deployment of
any long-range missiles capable of striking Russian cities or missile
defence systems similar to those in Romania and Poland, would be a "red
line" issue for Russia. Putin asked U.S. President Joe Biden for legal
guarantees that NATO would not expand eastward or put "weapons systems
that threaten us in close vicinity to Russian territory."
Do you want to know what kind of response Putin received
to his legitimate security concerns? It was given by NATO
Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg. This is what he told Putin:
“It's only Ukraine and 30 NATO allies that decide when Ukraine is
ready to join NATO. Russia has no veto, Russia has no say, and Russia
has no right to establish a sphere of influence to try to control their
neighbors.”
Do you get the insult and the humiliation of this
response? Not only the pompous globalist Stoltenberg refused to address
Russia security fears, he implied that pip-squeak countries like North
Macedonia, Portugal – who happened to be members of NATO – have a
greater say than Russia in whether a large country on its border joins
the alliance.
Having ridden roughshod over their populations for
nearly two years with their lockdown and vaccine regime, the Western
globalists grew arrogant, overbearing and overconfident. They lost touch
with reality and assumed that everyone would submit to their chicanery
in the same way that their own docile populations went along with their
random edicts and mandates.
Putin, however, would not bend to the
globalist chicanery and did exactly what he had kept warning about for
years if Russian concerns were not adequately addressed: He invaded
Ukraine to stop NATO’s expansion into the country with which he shares
nearly 1000 kilometers of border, and which once hosted Russia’s
capital.
The invasion of Ukraine was a pre-announced, rational act
of a strongman who felt increasingly encircled and threatened by what
he deems to be an antagonistic military block.
Putin’s move came
as a great shock to the Western elites who could have not imagined
someone standing up to them in such a bold way. They were completely
unprepared for the obvious and went into panic mode as they realized how
many innocent lives could be lost to their incompetence and pomposity.
As
the Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, Putin exposed the globalists’
hubris and ineptitude. As the Russian military advanced speedily through
the vast expanses of that land, the shocked elitists were nowhere to be
seen. It was only the heart-breaking bravery of the Ukrainian people
that saved them from complete exposure and humiliation.
And it is at this junction that their patently absurd “Putin is a madman” misinformation play comes in.
The
“Putin is a madman” canard is meant to shift the blame in the eyes of
the public for the Ukrainian tragedy on the allegedly irrational act of a
“crazy” man rather than assigning it to the right people: the
overbearing, domineering, arrogant Western globalists who treated the
legitimate security concerns of a great nuclear power with contempt.
In
Putin they encountered reality in the form of a willy and cunning
strongman who would not yield to their edicts and hollow pronouncements
in the submissive way they were used to from their own badgered
populations.
They were in for a rude awakening. For two years the
pompous globalists had been enriching themselves while tormenting
peoples of the world with their useless and destructive lockdowns and dangerous and largely ineffective injections. If you think this is a harsh exaggeration, please read this from Yahoo News:
“Lockdowns during the first COVID-19 wave in the spring of 2020 only
reduced COVID-19 mortality by 0.2% in the U.S. and Europe, according to a
Johns Hopkins University meta-analysis of several studies. "While this
meta-analysis concludes that lockdowns have had little to no public
health effects, they have imposed enormous economic and social costs
where they have been adopted," the researchers wrote. "In consequence,
lockdown policies are ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic
policy instrument." The researchers – Johns Hopkins University economics
professor Steve Hanke, Lund University economics professor Lars Jonung,
and special advisor at Copenhagen's Center for Political Studies Jonas
Herby – analyzed the effects of lockdown measures such as school
shutdowns, business closures, and mask mandates on COVID-19 deaths.”
Greedy
for ever more money, the globalists sought to pull Ukraine into their
World Order so they could suck out money from it to line up their own
pockets even further. They have been shown the way by none other than
Globalist-in-Chief Joe Biden whose family has already siphoned millions of dollars
out of Ukraine through his son Hunter. It is fully in character that
Biden is also a Covidista par excellence who forced millions of
unwilling Americans to take the Covid injections by pressuring employers
to institute illegal mandates.
Now the globalists’ arrogance and
ruthlessness got us into the Ukrainian crisis where we potentially face
the threat of nuclear war.
The clever guys that they always are, these wreckers have already managed to blame it all on the Mad Vlad.
Nearly $9 million in Zuckerberg grant funds directed solely to five Democratic strongholds in Wisconsin violated the state’s election code’s prohibition on bribery. That conclusion represents but one of the many troubling findings detailed in the report submitted today by a state-appointed special counsel to the Wisconsin Assembly.
Last August, Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos authorized the Office of Special Counsel, headed by retired state Supreme Court justice Michael Gableman, to investigate concerns about election integrity and the 2020 election. Gableman delivered an interim report to the state assembly on November 10, 2021. Earlier today, the special counsel provided a second interim report to the state legislative body, noting the report “is final in the sense that it provides a list of recommendations with time for the Legislature to act before the close of its session in March.”
While the special counsel’s nearly 150-page report closed with recommendations for the state’s legislative body, Gableman stressed from the get-go that the report did not seek to re-analyze the re-count that occurred in late 2020. Nor was the report’s purpose to challenge certification of the presidential election. Rather, the report represented a small step toward fulfilling “the duty of all citizens of our State and our nation to work hard to secure our democracy for this generation and the next,” the special counsel explained.
From the details exposed in Monday’s special counsel report, the state legislature has much work to do to address “the numerous questionable and unlawful actions of various actors in the 2020 election.” The first unlawful action, according to the report, concerned the payment of grant funds to five Wisconsin counties that were used to facilitate voting. That arrangement, Gableman wrote, violated Wis. Stat. § 12.11, which prohibits election bribery by providing it is illegal to offer anything of value to or for any person in order to induce any elector to go to the polls or vote.
According to the report, Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg providing financing that allowed the Center for Tech and Civic Life to offer nearly $9 million in “Zuck Bucks” to Milwaukee, Madison, Racine, Kenosha and Green Bay counties. In exchange, the “Zuckerberg 5,” as the report called the counties, in effect, operated Democratic get-out-the-vote efforts. Those grant funds then paid for illegal drop boxes to be placed in Democratic voting strongholds.
The illegal use of drop boxes represented a second area of concern to the special counsel’s office. The report notes state election code limits the manner in which ballots may be cast, providing that an elector must personally mail or deliver his or her ballot to the municipal clerk, except where the law authorizes an agent to act on the behalf of the voter.
The Zuckerberg 5 also violated the federal and state constitutional guarantee of equal protection, according to the special counsel report. The grant money targeted specific voters for special voting privileges, to the disadvantage of similarly situated voters located in other Wisconsin counties. The report also detailed troubling evidence the Zuckerberg 5 counties allowing private groups working with the granting organization, the Center for Tech and Civic Life, to “unlawfully administer aspects of the election,” including in one county where one organization was unlawfully embedded in local government election administration.
The special counsel’s report also highlighted the Wisconsin Election Commission (WEC) illegal directive to clerks to ignore the state election code governing voting in nursing homes. In several nursing home locations throughout the state, 100 percent of registered voters cast a ballot in the 2020 election—an unheard-of rate that included many ineligible voters.
Non-citizen and incapacitated citizens also remained listed on Wisconsin’s voting rolls, in violation of the law, according to the report. Because some non-citizens qualify for driver’s licenses, the law requires non-citizens’ names be removed from the master roll, but that was not done, according to the special counsel. Likewise, individuals declared incompetent must, by law, be removed from the master list, but again that did not occur.
Special Counsel Gableman detailed many other substantial problems with the 2020 election, but equally troubling to the widespread violations of election law established in the report were the attempts by government officials to impede the investigation. Both the Wisconsin Election Commission and the state attorney general “have refused to cooperate with the Legislature’s investigation and actively obstructed it,” according to the report, with a separate appendix detailing how the Office of Special Counsel and the state Assembly have been blocked from investigating portions of the Wisconsin government.
Efforts by the special counsel’s office to obtain the information needed for it to complete its work for the Wisconsin Assembly continue, with litigation seeking to enforce the legislative subpoenas previously issued. Once those subpoenas are enforced, the special counsel noted he will “manage and process the voluminous responsive records, and will facilitate any available audits.”
In the meantime, the special counsel presented the state legislature with numerous recommendations to address the problems and illegalities detailed in the report, including eliminating the Wisconsin Election Commission. How the legislature responds will be telling of their commitment to election integrity—just as the state attorney general and other government officials’ efforts to thwart the investigation speaks volumes.
When the Bush Administration announced in 2008 that Ukraine and Georgia would be eligible for NATO membership, I knew it was a terrible idea. Nearly two decades after the end of both the Warsaw Pact and the Cold War, expanding NATO made no sense. NATO itself made no sense.
Explaining my “no” vote on a bill to endorse the expansion, I said at the time:
NATO is an organization whose purpose ended with the end of its Warsaw Pact adversary… This current round of NATO expansion is a political reward to governments in Georgia and Ukraine that came to power as a result of US-supported revolutions, the so-called Orange Revolution and Rose Revolution.
Providing US military guarantees to Ukraine and Georgia can only further strain our military. This NATO expansion may well involve the US military in conflicts unrelated to our national interest…
Unfortunately, as we have seen this past week, my fears have come true. One does not need to approve of Russia’s military actions to analyze its stated motivation: NATO membership for Ukraine was a red line it was not willing to see crossed. As we find ourselves at risk of a terrible escalation, we should remind ourselves that it didn’t have to happen this way. There was no advantage to the United States to expand and threaten to expand NATO to Russia’s doorstep. There is no way to argue that we are any safer for it.
NATO itself was a huge mistake.
When in 1949 the US Senate initially voted on the NATO treaty, Sen. Robert Taft – known as “Mr. Republican” – gave an excellent speech on why he voted against creating NATO.
Explaining his “no” vote, Taft said:
… the treaty is a part of a much larger program by which we arm all these nations against Russia… A joint military program has already been made… It thus becomes an offensive and defensive military alliance against Russia. I believe our foreign policy should be aimed primarily at security and peace, and I believe such an alliance is more likely to produce war than peace.
Taft continued:
If we undertake to arm all the nations around Russia…and Russia sees itself ringed about gradually by so-called defensive arms from Norway and Denmark to Turkey and Greece, it may form a different opinion. It may decide that the arming of western Europe, regardless of its present purpose, looks to an attack upon Russia. Its view may be unreasonable, and I think it is. But from the Russian standpoint it may not seem unreasonable. They may well decide that if war is the certain result, that war might better occur now rather than after the arming of Europe is completed…
How right he was.
NATO went off the rails long before 2008, however. The North Atlantic Treaty was signed on April 4, 1949 and by the start of the Korean War just over a year later, NATO was very much involved in the military operation of the war in Asia, not Europe!
NATO’s purpose was stated to "guarantee the safety and freedom of its members by political and military means." It is a job not well done!
I believe as strongly today as I did back in my 2008 House Floor speech that, “NATO should be disbanded, not expanded.” In the meantime, expansion should be off the table. The benefits of expansion do not outweigh the risks!
Today is National Read Day. If one researches the history, the date was chosen in honor of one of best known children’s author, Dr. Seuss.
During the past few years, some, who believe they are better able to determine what is acceptable, found Dr. Seuss to not fit their views. Maybe green eggs are racist. Vegans may have been offended by the mention of ham. As only they know their thinking processes (what minimal few they may have), it remains a question for the ages.
At any rate, a ‘take off’ of Dr. Seuss’ style has brought forth some thoughts on a current political phenomenon.
To provide further insight into the arbitrators of children’s acceptable books….
Sidney “Kraken” Powell. Conspiracy theories about the 2020 election that her “Kraken” never showed up with promised “biblical cases” to prove. But I digress. Except for the conspiracy theory part.
There are Russia-Trump conspiracies and then there are Russia-Trumpconspiracy theories.
I’m talking about full-metal fantastical conspiracy theories that make wingnuts like Alex Jones and Mike Lindell (relax, those so-affected; I’m just messin’ with you about the MyPillow loon guy) look like pikers.
Our story begins with one “word”: MSNBC.
Or PMSNBC, as the late great Rush Limbaugh “affectionately” referred to the hopelessly left-wing network of misfit journalist-wannabes like Rachel Maddow and Joy Reid. And, hoo-boy. This time, the loons of MSNBC might have outdone themselves — no small feat indeed.
So here’s the scoop.
As reported by Fox News, Sarah Kendzior, who bills herself as an author, anthropologist, researcher, and scholar, and is co-host of the equally-loony Gaslit Nation podcast, trotted into a ridiculous MSNBC segment just in time to declare that Donald Trump was “installed” into the presidency by Vladimir Putin in 2016.
Kendzior made the silly claim during a Saturday appearance on MSNBC’s “The Cross Connection.”
Trump was installed as the president of the United States in order to weaken the alliances that were preventing Putin from achieving his goals. Alliances like NATO, our relationship with our European partners… with Ukraine.
Trump was put in as a bulldozer — and he was also put in as a bulldozer to the Constitution, to our system of checks and balances, to our system of institutional trust — and the unwillingness of people in the United States to confront the brokenness of those institutions, whether through financial corruption in recent years or age-old systemic problems like the endemic racism that holds our country up has contributed to that …
And Fox News, in this sense, is just an extension of the longrunning destructive pattern.
So how does one — a sane one — even begin to attempt to have an intelligent conversation with a wingnut like this? A sane one doesn’t. No more so than trying to intelligently converse with wingnut attorney Lin Wood, who in late December 2020 predicted then-Vice President Mike Pence would be arrested for treason and executed by firing squad. Pence’s unforgivable sin, of course, was adherence to the U.S. Constitution.
The point: Loons gonna loon.
Kendzior didn’t go into detail about how Trump was “installed” or what “proof” she possesses that he was; conspiracy loons are always short on truth and long on conspiracy theory. And “shockingly,” host Tifanny Cross “forgot” to challenge Kendzior’s ridiculous claims.
I’m always amused by the conviction and seriousness with which these lunatics present their “cases.” Let alone the “sources” and “information” they possess. From Alex Jones to Lin Wood and Sidney “Kraken” Powell, to this lunatic, they and they alone are the arbiters of conspiratorial wisdom.
And, of course, the equally loony lemmings who follow them off the cliff. Every damn time.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has brought Republican neocons out of the woodwork, agitating for escalation and U.S. military involvement. The same people who brought us the Iraq War and a 20-year occupation of Afghanistan that ended last year in an ignominious and chaotic U.S. withdrawal would now like us to go to war with Russia, a nuclear power, over Ukraine.
Why? Partly because they’re reacting emotionally to the war, which is understandable up to a point. But mostly they would like to leverage a military conflict with Russia to regain control of the Republican Party, whose voters have become deeply disillusioned with foreign interventions — and with the neocons who peddled them to the American people.
Just consider who’s calling for escalation with Russia. Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., a NeverTrump hack who has spent the last few days posting misinformation about the war on Twitter, over the weekend called for the United States to impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine.
Somehow, the analysis of people like Kinzinger never gets past the part where we shoot down a Russian MiG-29. But of course a no-fly zone would mean just that: The U.S. would have to shoot down Russian warplanes, and Russian warplanes would very likely do the same to us. We would be in a shooting war with Russia before the no-fly zone was even established.
To his credit, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., flatly rejected the idea, saying, “that would mean World War III.” Even the Biden White House, which rarely misses the chance to fall for a bad idea, dismissed Kinzinger’s insane notion, calling it “not a good idea.”
But it’s not just nobody Republicans like Kinzinger saying this stuff. Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., also endorsed the idea of creating a no-fly zone over Ukraine. “Clearly, in the absence of a U.N. resolution, which Russia would veto, a strong coalition of like-minded nations should step in and seriously consider this,” Wicker told HuffPost on Monday. Wicker isn’t some back-bencher. He’ll likely become the next top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee after Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., resigns later this year.
Joining Wicker in this loose talk is former NATO supreme commander and retired U.S. Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove, who also called for a no-fly zone in Ukraine.
The no-fly zone isn’t the only terrible idea being bandied about by establishment Republicans and former generals. On Sunday, Sen. Rob Portman, an Ohio Republican and a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said on Meet The Press that we should right away bring Ukraine and other countries, like Georgia, into NATO. Bringing Ukraine into NATO, a mutual defense treaty, would of course trigger Article V, which obligates all NATO members to come to the defense of a member that’s under attack. In this case, that would mean — you guessed it — the U.S. going to war with Russia.
That would be the best-case scenario for Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has called on the West for arms and aid, and asked NATO to “close the skies.” And while it’s perfectly understandable why Zelensky would want a no-fly zone over his country, or NATO troops to attack Russian forces inside Ukraine, it doesn’t make sense for the U.S. to entertain the idea, or even for U.S. politicians and former generals to talk about it seriously in public.
Unless, that is, these politicians see an opportunity, which some of them no doubt do. If the last five or six years have revealed anything about American politics, it’s that the Republican Party is no longer controlled by the neocon establishment. Donald Trump wrested the party from the neocons, and he did so partly by insisting during the 2016 primaries that the GOP have an honest reckoning about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
No other candidate (besides Sen. Rand Paul) wanted to talk about that, because none of them wanted to criticize George W. Bush or admit that going to war in the Middle East in the vain hope of spreading democracy was in retrospect a horrible idea. But Trump forced the issue, to his credit, and won the nomination partly on that basis. It was something Republican voters wanted and needed; confronting the folly of those wars was the only way to move forward as a party.
But now the neocons are back, if only for a moment, and they’d like you to consider the idea that we shoot down some Russian warplanes, or annex Ukraine into NATO, or do any number of other reckless and provocative things to get us into a war with Russia. Also, they would like to be the ones to lead this effort.
Understand that these aren’t just stupid ideas from small-minded people, it’s part of a larger, desperate bid for relevance, a last-ditch attempt to regain influence in the GOP — influence that these people long ago squandered, and should never get back.
There comes a time in every performance of the United Nations production when the arch villain bombs the milk factories. Today, Russian President Vladimir Putin takes his turn.
As we return to our seats from the lobby during commercial interlude, we discover the model U.N. interns have left the blue and yellow ribbons on our seats. We know exactly what segment of the melodrama comes next; the children are suffering.
The well attired gentlemen in the mezzanine know this is the moment when they must position their freshly pressed pocket kerchief for quick access. Heart strings will be pulled, and silk gowns do not fare well as the tears begin to flow. Well educated chivalry, passed down from father to son, has prepared them for this moment. It’s not quite time for the checkbooks yet; first they must feel the sound of the violins.
Surprisingly, Bono and Geldorf have not yet made their appearance. However, with the speed of modern social media, and knowing the technology of our time means we cannot wait, the EU assembly must lay the groundwork for the great American oration that is center stage from the Capitol later tonight.
New York – Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky urged the EU to “prove you are with us” in a defiant speech on Tuesday.
Mr Zelenesky, who has become a symbol of defiance for his country, issued an impassioned speech via video link, where he called on the EU to stand with Ukraine as Russia continues its deadly advance on the country.
During his speech, Mr Zelensky described the missile strikes on Kharkiv, as an act of terror against the city, and indeed Ukraine.
As he spoke of the country’s fight to defend its “freedom” and land from the Russian invaders, the bloc’s official Ukrainian-English interpreter seemingly becomes emotional as he listened to Mr Zelensky’s defiant speech. Mr Zelensky said: “Without you, Ukraine is going to be lonesome. We have proven our strengths. We are exactly the same as you. (more)
New York II – […] The Ukrainian president’s rallying cry brought members of the European Parliament, many wearing t-shirts emblazoned with #standwithUkraine or wearing blue and yellow rubbons, to their feet.
It also brought the English interpreter to tears, with his voice audibly faltering as he translated the speech, in which Mr Zelensky declared: ‘Nobody is going to break us. We are strong. We are Ukrainians.’
The rousing reception was in stark contrast to scenes over in Geneva, where ambassadors and diplomats staged a mass walkout as Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov addressed a UN human rights forum. (read more)
NEW YORK, NY—Whoopi Goldberg again made waves after publicly questioning why America should care about the war in Ukraine since it's "just two groups of white people" duking it out.
"Genocide? How could this possibly end up being genocide? They're all white!" said Ms. Goldberg as her co-hosts nodded in unison. "Has anyone seen a picture of the Ukrainian army? How about the President and his cabinet? Not even a suntan. Now I educated myself, and I realize now it was wrong to dismiss the Holocaust because it wasn't just white people involved—there were also Jews. I also learned that not all Jews are white! But look, there are no Jews over in Ukraine, so this is exactly what I thought the Holocaust was: a bunch of white people killing each other. I say, let them at it!"
Joy Behar nodded ferociously, still furious that the invasion had delayed her Russian River cruise. Barbara Walters started to say that she thought the Ukrainian president was Jewish, but her face once again froze in place. A producer quickly moved the program to commercial before downing a bottle of Prozac and calling Colbert to once again book Ms. Goldberg.
At publishing time, Ms. Goldberg had issued yet another apology for calling Kennedy's assassination a "silly disagreement among white people."
In a desperate bid to console a nation reeling from crises he created, President Joe Biden delivered his first official State of the Union Address on Tuesday.
The Democrat attempted to downplay his plummeting approval by promising to do better in his second year in office but instead offered a speech riddled with falsehoods and contradictions.
While Biden’s address was supposed to breathe new life into his presidency, Americans are meanwhile plagued with rising prices, a southern border crisis, and now an overseas conflict that leaves them feeling like “the State of our union is in crisis because of Joe Biden.” Here are 17 absurd lies Biden told during his State of the Union speech.
‘Freedom Will Always Triumph Over Tyranny’
Biden opened his speech by praising the lack of Covid-19 theater in the legislative chambers and claiming that “freedom will always triumph over tyranny.”
The audacious claim comes just a few months after the president tried to force the coronavirus jab on American workers, pushed his administration to work with Big Tech to censor his political opponents, and smeared Republicans as domestic terrorists for caring about their children’s education.
Powerful Sanctions Stopped Russia
Days after Biden said U.S. sanctions against Russia weren’t expected to “prevent anything from happening” in the Ukraine conflict, the president claimed that he leveraged powerful punishments against Vladimir Putin, which stopped the Eastern European in his tracks.
“A Russian dictator, invading a foreign country, has costs around the world,” Biden said. “And I’m taking robust action to make sure the pain of our sanctions is targeted at Russia’s economy.”
Twenty-four hours before Biden’s contradictory statement, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters that the sanctions “are meant to have a deterrent impact” against Russia.
Vice President Kamala Harris, national security adviser Jake Sullivan, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and other Cabinet members also promoted sanctions as a way to stop Putin from invading Ukraine.
Biden touted the American Rescue Plan as a significant boost to the economy that “helped working people and left no one behind,” but he neglected to mention it was this sudden influx of federal cash in a slowly rebounding economy that contributed to the inflation and rising prices plaguing Americans today.
His false claim earned a round of boos from the Democrat politicians in the audience who were eager for a chance to take a jab at Trump.
‘I Created Lots of Jobs’
Biden touted the rising U.S. job record as one of the highlights of his first year in office but failed to mention that the only reason the job rate is growing is that millions of people are returning to work after tyrannical bureaucrats shut down the economy for months in the name of stopping the spread of a virus.
Buying American Products Is a Priority
Biden said buying American products is a priority for his administration but has conveniently avoided reinstating U.S. energy independence by cutting off Russian oil supplies and lifting his ban on American drilling.
Biden’s lie also ignored the fact that the White House recently defended buying at least $1.3 billion worth of Covid-19 rapid tests from China to disseminate to Americans instead of relying on locally-sourced ones.
‘Our Economy Roared Back Faster Than Almost Anyone Predicted’
Biden claimed that “our economy roared back fast than anyone predicted,” but as average Americans suffer the consequences of a prolonged supply-chain crisis and inflation, it’s clear that the price hikes once touted by the administration as short-term are here to stay for a while.
Solution to Inflation Is ‘Lower Your Costs’
Biden claimed that the solution to inflation is for businesses to “lower your costs, not your wages,” but anyone with a brain knows that in order to stay open, companies must raise their prices to pay for increasingly expensive goods. If businesses are forced to raise their wages, they will also raise prices for consumers who have to bear the burden or suffer the consequences of understaffing.
My Tax Plan Will Lower Costs and Deficit
“My plan to fight inflation will lower your costs and lower the deficit,” Biden claimed.
The truth is, however, that Biden’s tax plan would “result in a net increase in the deficit totaling $367 billion over the 2022-2031 period, not counting any additional revenue that may be generated by additional funding for tax enforcement,” according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Anyone Making Less Than $400k Doesn’t Have to Pay More Taxes
Biden also repeated one of his favorite falsehoods that anyone making less than $400,000 a year doesn’t have to pay any more in taxes.
Experts, however, agree that his promise not to raise taxes on those making less than $400,000 a year is ambitious and not realistic because those who fall below the mark are still subject to consequences from a highly taxed economy.
Let’s Lower Cost of Insulin (I Raised It)
Biden called for lower insulin prices amid what he said is a drug price crisis. What the president didn’t acknowledge, however, is that he undid a rule enacted by Trump that effectively lowered insulin and epinephrine prices for Americans
I Support Funding Police
Funding for police, Biden said, is suddenly a big priority for his administration, but when rioters called for harm and financial cuts to police forces around the country during the 2020 summer of rage, Biden refused to condemn them.
The president also allies himself with Democrats who proudly call for “racist” police forces to lose their funding.
The Right to Vote Is Under Assault
Biden claimed the “right to vote is under assault” by states passing voter-integrity laws but failed to mention that Democrats and their cronies in Big Tech and the corporate media were the ones conspiring to rig the 2020 election. As The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway reported:
Hundreds of laws and processes were changed in the months leading up to the election, sometimes legally and sometimes not, creating chaos, confusion, and uncertainty. Tech oligarch Mark Zuckerberg, one of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful men, spent $419 million — nearly as much as the federal government itself — to interfere in the government’s management of the election in key states.
Pro-Democrat propaganda in the media and censorship of conservative voices and damning stories such as the New York Post’s report on Hunter Biden also contributed to the plot to take over elections.
Gun Manufacturers Are Immune to Lawsuits
Biden said gunmakers are immune from prosecution even though manufacturers can be sued if a firearm is faulty or malfunctions.
On the other hand, many of the manufacturers who created the Covid-19 jab are immune to prosecution, despite Biden’s claims that the gun industry is the only one afforded special privileges.
‘We Need to Secure Our Border’
Biden said he wants to secure the southern border and that he’s taking swift action to do so. The truth is, however, that more than 100,000 illegal migrants are crossing the U.S.-Mexico border each month after the administration touted open borders and overlooked the humanitarian crisis for more than a year.
Biden not only started his presidency by stripping border protections enacted by Trump but welcomed illegal migrants with open arms. As a result, Border Patrol encountered at least 2 million illegal aliens at the southern border in 2021 alone and are expected to encounter even more in 2022. Many of these illegal aliens were released into the U.S. with loose instructions to report to ICE facilities but didn’t.
Abortion Is Health Care
“If we want to go forward — not backward — we must protect access to health care. Preserve a woman’s right to choose,” Biden claimed during his speech.
