Putin’s road to victory and other commentary

Foreign desk: Putin’s Road to Victory

When Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea in 2014, “then-secretary of state John Kerry and other Obama administration officials kept talking up the option of a ‘diplomatic off-ramp’ that would end Russia’s military occupation,” recalls National Review’s Jim Geraghty. It went nowhere: Kerry was “in denial of the fact” that Putin “was on precisely the highway he wanted to be on, headed toward exactly the destination he wanted.” Now “you hear the same refrain.” But again, Putin “doesn’t want an ‘off ramp’! He doesn’t want to end his war, he wants to win his war.” And he’s betting “his willpower can outlast the West’s.” It’s not a bad bet: “Sure, the world is outraged at Russia’s brutality in Ukraine now.” But it was also “outraged by the Taliban returning to power,” Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons, China’s “ongoing genocide of the Uyghurs” — and “moved on” every time.

Eye on energy: End Joe’s War on Oil, Gas

With pump prices their highest ever and inflation soaring, “Americans need relief, and one thing stands in the way: President Biden’s unwillingness to reverse course on his administration’s commitment to put the American oil-and-gas industry out of business at the consumer’s expense,” thunders Harold Hamm at The Wall Street Journal. Biden’s policies leave the nation “falling further from energy independence,” yet the prez “ is working with the Saudis, Venezuela and even Iran to come to the rescue. Why?” Better to declare energy independence a top national goal, giving “certainty for producers to bring new capital and supplies to the market.” Stop blocking drilling. (“No leases have been issued for federal land since 2020.”) And “support energy infrastructure, including pipelines.”

Times watch: Inside Story v. Outside

The New York Times’ Matthew Rosenberg, observes Jenny Holland at Spiked, “wrote breathlessly” about “heroic police officers who ‘fought to keep the hordes from storming the Capitol’ ” on Jan. 6. But Project Veritas caught him on tape mocking this version of events — and his colleagues who embraced it. “It’s deeply disturbing to hear such a frank admission that the Capitol riot was exaggerated by his own paper.” Though in “a healthy media and political climate, nothing Rosenberg said would be that controversial . . . it’s considered verboten in mainstream discourse,” where any violation of the approved narrative makes you “a wild-eyed right-wing nutjob.” “The discrepancy between the public message and the private reality is damning . . . of the entire liberal-left media.”

From the right: Hochul’s Legal-Weed Misstep

Gov. Hochul’s plan to give priority to those who’ve violated marijuana laws, including pushers, in licensing now-legal weed shops is “another misstep,” warns Charles Fain Lehman at City Journal. “Running a reasonable legal regime means keeping the previous black market as far away as possible.” Yet in the name of “equity,” Hochul would hand control of the weed industry to those who “didn’t comply with the law when selling marijuana was illegal” — “at the expense” of law-abiding ‘equity’ applicants.” In many states, new legal markets have failed to suppress illegal ones, as legalizers predicted. “Putting those who ran the old market in charge of the new one is a sure way to replicate the problem in New York.”

Media beat: “Don’t Say Gay” = Pure Propaganda

“The corporate media coverage of Florida’s Parental Rights in Education bill provides the most important ‘teachable moment’ of the decade for American parents,” argues Max Eden for Newsweek. For starters, “Many parents haven’t heard” the Florida bill’s real name, but only “the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill” — “an unprecedented propaganda ploy.” And what does the bill do? “Teachers in Florida will not be permitted to talk about sex-stuff until kids are in the fourth grade”: That’s it. And that’s the key lesson: “The profound — if not potentially infinite — gap between what the media will tell you about schools and what’s really happening in schools.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board

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