It finally happened, and everyone should have seen it coming: Russian bombs are now raining down on Kiev — and Donetsk, Luhansk, Kharkiv, Odessa, Ivano-Frankivsk, and Mariupol — making Ukraine a full-blown war zone with reports of civilian and military casualties piling up.

And we have Hunter and his Dad to largely thank for it. Hunter Biden's need to take baksheesh undercut U.S. security interests, left Ukraine a corruption-soaked mess unfit for NATO membership, and opened the gates wide for Russia to move in on Ukraine.

Biden family corruption was one of many reasons why Ukraine couldn't get into NATO and secure the Article 5 protections it needed to deter Russia.  Now it's fighting alone and hoping it can defeat the Russian juggernaut, which is only just beginning.

[This is VDH at his most powerfully eloquent, all the way to a crescendo of eloquence at the end.]

Canada is now governed by absurdism, and it is symptomatic of an ailing North American elite.

The truckers remind Western audiences that modern progressivism equates muscular labor and hourly wage compensation with a sort of Neanderthalism, rewarding those who type on keyboards while punishing those who physically deliver, fix, make, and repair things.

We can reduce the divide to the embarrassing optics of a pouty-face pajama-boy prime minister with a pompadour coiffure, issuing threats to non-threatening beefy and calloused workers. Each time Trudeau speaks to his nation, the visual message is that any of the truckers could do a better job than he in both setting and explaining policy, while he would become a helpless weeping child if placed behind the wheel of a big rig.

Canada is leaving the Western world.

In terms of all-encompassing government, suppression of dissent and the denial of fundamental human rights to many of its citizens, Canada is now more similar to Cuba than to any free country. Canada may eventually return to Western Civilization, but as of this writing, the majority of Canadians appear to have no interest in it doing so.

According to Maru Public Opinion (2/17), "two-thirds (66%) of Canadians support Prime Minister Justin Trudeau bringing in the Emergencies Act ... A majority (56%) of Canadians do not support the truckers who are protesting in any way, shape, or form ... This is a majority view held in every province/region across the country."

It is shocking to learn a majority of Canadians are on Trudeau’s side in the cartoon above.

[Note by Jack Wheeler:  Keep in mind while reading this that the author is the former assistant director of intelligence for the FBI, and principal deputy director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC).  It’s a must-read.]

John Durham has been a special prosecutor for almost a year and a half — not a long time, but plenty of time for a drumbeat to begin that he was showing little progress against his orders to examine the origins of the debunked Trump-Russia collusion narrative that convulsed a presidency.

His few indictments so far have been directed against peripheral players, feeding a fear among Donald Trump’s supporters that elites higher up the stack are going to get away with their chicanery.

Now, however, Durham has signaled to the American people that his investigation has legs, despite perceptions of plodding inertia. He has provided hope that accountability in D.C. — rare as a MAGA sticker on a Prius — actually might happen.  Here’s how he did it.

Vlad Putin, the evil though very calculating chief oligarch of the shriveled nation of Russia (when stacked against its predecessor, the Soviet Union), is playing chess over the fate of Ukraine, while our figurehead president and his gaggle of administration mediocrities (here being charitable) and Pentagon toadies play checkers.

On Monday (2/21), Putin recognized Russian-dominated regions of Ukraine, followed by a minor incursion of "peacekeepers," traveling by bus, not tanks.

Putin doesn't need a full-scale invasion, I believe, because his approach is strategic.  Meanwhile, we’re witnessing full diversion mode as American news outlets happily obsess on Ukraine.  Putin is playing SlowJoe like a fiddle – here’s how.