Just When You Think You've Heard The Dumbest Things On The Ukraine Crisis, Along Comes The New York Times

So how are you all enjoying the "Minor Incursion" so far?

Do notice how it didn't happen under Trump, whom many falsely accuse of being Putin's puppet  (forgetting that Trump put the biggest hurt on Russia of all the most recent presidents), but happened under the "adult in the room" Biden, and before him the last Russia into Ukraine incursion was under Obama.  

Why is that, one wonders? 

Anyways, The New York Times doesn't consider such a question, no time to dwell on it I suppose, but it did go on to ask the following this morning.

The New York Times: Good morning. Why aren’t the U.S. and its allies imposing tougher sanctions?

Behind a paywall, but you can get it sent right to your email box.

The author of the piece notes the announced sanctions aren't exactly severe, (who coulda guessed that would happen?) and then wonders why more aggressive sanctions aren't being carried put and suggests some that reveal a complete lack of understanding of reality,  so let's get to the funny bits:

But it’s also worth taking a look at the potential sanctions that the U.S., Britain and the European Union have chosen not to impose. They are almost certainly more severe than the sanctions going into effect. A full-scale diplomatic response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could include:

-Suspending Russia from international organizations, like the SWIFT network of banks (as Representative Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, suggested yesterday) and the Interpol network of law enforcement

-Seizing apartments, yachts and other assets owned by many members of the Russian elite in London, Miami and elsewhere, as Anne Applebaum of The Atlantic has suggested.

-Cracking down on Vladimir Putin’s propaganda tools in the West, including the RT television network, and on people like Gerhard Schröder, the former German chancellor who now works for a Russian oil company.

-Perhaps most significant, sharply reduce purchases of Russian oil and natural gas, by far the country’s largest source of revenue.

Ok, now that we're done laughing at the naivete, let's go through some of these.

Swift and Interpol: Dumping Russia from SWIFT and Interpol is not something that happens overnight. Doing it will have some dangerous effects on the world financial system, not to mention undermine lots of anti-money laundering and anti-terrorism efforts and monitoring that happen in the SWIFT network and Interpol.  Want Russia's international money movements and their criminals activities outside of Russia to go totally dark?  Have at it.

Seizing Other People's Stuff: Notice how Progressives just love to seize other people's stuff?  Also there's nothing better than a pundit yelling: "Hey let's have you and him fight"  from their happy place. No chance any of that could go badly nor of any retaliation, nor seizing innocent people's stuff, right?

Cracking down on other media:  Ah, the MSM's ongoing dream of censoring other news outlets.  Obviously RT runs propaganda, but you can gain some useful intel from what they're saying - and what they're not saying. Not to mention they do run some actual news now and then that our MSM doesn't touch.

And now for the dumbest suggestion yet:   Have Western Europe and the US stop buying Russian oil and natural gas.

This is where you can tell the author has no damn clue whatsoever and an utter lack of seriousness.

Western Europe has been going on a greenie climate change binge for awhile now, and has dumped their power generation and heating capacity and is now fully and totally dependent on Russian gas.

It's not like they can just stop buying it - they can't.

Biden had lifted sanctions that had been imposed by Trump on the Russian pipeline bringing gas to Western Europe, cementing Europe's dependence on Russian gas.  Biden also cancelled support for the Israel to Europe gas pipeline making Western Europe even more dependent on Russian gas with no alternative supply.

Biden also cancelled Keystone and multiple oil and gas drilling leases in the US, reducing our production, so dont expect the US to step in, and we now we need to buy Russian gas too - they're now our largest foreign supplier.

What is Western Europe, with no alternate - by design - to Russian natural gas supposed to do mid-winter? Just turn it off and tell their people to freeze for the cause? 

Good luck with that happening, you Greenies and Dems toadying up to Russia made that impossible.  

It's not like there's now an American surplus of oil and gas to step in and provide supply.  Biden and the Dems aggressively nixed that opportunity and show no inclination of reconsidering and getting production up to even pre-pandemic levels.

The utter clueless-ness of the so called experts and the pundits of our media, in America's allegedly leading newspaper no less,  is rather hilarious and depressing as well.