Can A White Rook Take A White Bishop?

 ... because, in essence, that's what we've done to our petroleum production and to Germany.

By taking much of our oil production offline and then approving Nordstream 2, we made Putin's moves for him. Germany, having gone global-warming-climate-change-insane, turned off their nuclear power plants, but didn't turn off their winters. Now they need oil and gas to keep from freezing to death. We can't provide that because we're energy importers again, thanks to the global-warming-climate-change-insanity here.

As an added benefit, Putin the Terrible has got plenty of cash to splash because our eco-idiots have driven the price of oil through the roof with their idiocies and Russia gets all its money from black gold.

All of this would have been more or less acceptable had we not turned Putin into Arch-Enemy Numero Uno. Ordinarily, we wouldn't really have a stake in which pack of vodka-soaked, corrupt oligarchs rule the steppes, but now that we've screamed "Russia! Russia! Russia!" for the last several years, we can't very well let Russia's rich, decrepit perverts steal territory from Ukraine's rich, decrepit perverts.

So we've pushed lots of chips into the pot, we've discarded our trio of aces and drew a three, a five and an eight, all of different suits. Not to worry, our Elites are telling us that Putin is a dummy.

Putin would never make it at UCLA, much less Harvard!

I read recently that Germany is backing our play, at least for now, as far as the Nordstream pipeline goes. We'll see how long that lasts when the energy bills go up and the Kraut voters start complaining. Their deplorables probably don't care about Ukraine any more than ours do.

Finally, there's the military side of things. Sure, the booze-fueled Russian army isn't going to be crossing the Danube any time soon, but they've got an attack submarine or two. If we go into Ukraine and establish a no-fly zone, as some geniuses are suggesting, that means that American units will be shooting down Russian planes. Putin is a prickly customer and he's not likely to take that laying down. Russian attack boats vs American aircraft carriers isn't a matchup I want to see happen in real life.

You can find a tremendous thread about no-fly zones in the Ukraine here.

So, in summary, we've got no reason to get involved and few resources to do so, but we are getting more deeply involved every day while one of our most important allies is lukewarm at best. Thank God our leadership caste all went to Ivy League schools. I'd hate to see what would happen if they weren't so very, very smart.

Bonus Canadian Trucker Update: Man, was I wrong about that! It turns out the Canadians like the jackboot on their necks. Who knew? I guess it keeps them warm in the winter or something. The free world is now down to us and England and I'm not so sure about England or even some of our own states. I'm talking to you, California.

Extra Bonus Canadian Trucker Update: OK, maybe I was wrong about being wrong and I was right instead. Trudeau rescinded the Emergency Power Act, or whatever it's called, before the Canadian Senate had a chance to vote on it and whup his behind. Who knows what's going on in Canadia, anyway? It's a frozen enigma buried in a snowy riddle frozen to a mystery. Or something like that.

Super Special Bonus Tweet

Wretchard the Cat put the intellectual decay of our leadership caste quite poetically.

We slid, bit by bit into perdition, greased by imbecile theories that abolished competence, design margins, borders and finally common sense. The wonder was it took so long to happen but it finally did.

— wretchardthecat (@wretchardthecat) February 22, 2022