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On the first day of his invasion of Ukraine, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin warned Western nations not to intervene lest they face “consequences greater than any you have faced in history.” Three days later, Putin put Russian nuclear forces on some kind of elevated status.

No nations are intervening.

Five days into the war, Putin launched a long-range missile with near-nuclear destructiveness. What looked like a thermobaric missile hit Freedom Square in the center of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city.

Putin’s nuclear threat has succeeded in scaring off the West, allowing him to employ non-nuclear weapons that are nearly as horrific.

While the West cannot ignore the risk of a nuclear confrontation, it should not be frozen by fear of it in face of Putin’s monstrous acts, those already committed and those in prospect.

With his invasion of Ukraine, Putin has changed the Post-World War II strategic calculus. Until now, nuclear powers have followed the rationale of mutual assured destruction (MAD), namely that, if no one can survive nuclear war, much less win it, then no one will engage in it or even threaten it. This reality has served to channel military confrontations into conventional warfare for three-quarters of a century.

Putin has changed that. He is using nuclear threats and blackmail to create an umbrella under which to conduct one-sided conventional warfare, with his threats immobilizing any conventional military response by opposing nuclear powers.

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State governments can do many things with the federal aid they received under last year’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan (ARP). One thing they are expressly prohibited from doing is pouring that money into pensions for well-paid public employees. Connecticut is doing it anyway.

Gov. Ned Lamont’s just-released $48 billion two-year budget proposal funnels $2.9 billion in special deposits into the state employee and teacher pension funds. This is an amount equal to the federal aid the state received under ARP. These special deposits are over and above CT’s regularly scheduled $7.2 billion in state contributions to the two retirement systems.

Mr. Lamont outlined his plan for the federal stimulus money in February 2021, before ARP became law. “If additional federal aid for state and local governments is not enacted,” Lamont's budget proposal last year read, the state would draw down its rainy-day “budget reserve fund” (BRF) to fund its budget. But if “unrestricted” federal assistance came through, the state would use that money—rather than the BRF—to shore up the general budget. That would leave the BRF overstuffed. Under state law, when the BRF exceeds 15% of the annual budget, the excess must be moved into the pension funds.

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It is darkest before dawn. COVID is surging, particularly in the Northeast. Yet, it is not a wild-eyed prediction to say that this will be COVID’s last gasp. While the virus will be around for a long time, it will cease to be a serious threat.

Why? Because of vaccines and because of two relatively unheralded medical advances.

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Biden Administration generals are fighting the last war. Last Thursday, they mandated that large businesses and health care facilities require that their workers get vaccinated for COVID-19.

The next day, Pfizer announced an antiviral pill to treat the virus. Pfizer’s pill is 89% effective. A Merck antiviral pill for COVID-19 (with only about 50% effectiveness) is already in use in Britain.

COVID-19 treatment pills destroy any vestige of logic or justification for Biden’s vaccine mandates.

No matter how someone contracts the virus, these pills prevent serious illness – hospitalization and death. With double lines of defense against the coronavirus – vaccination, and, now, these new antiviral treatment pills – mandates have become unnecessary.

Last Saturday, the Fifth U.S. Court of Appeals issued an emergency stay of the Biden business mandate, saying it raises “grave statutory and constitutional issues.”

Quite apart from the legal issues, the mandates ignore science and logic. The logic of vaccine mandates has always been weak and self-contradictory insofar as their implied purpose of protecting vaccinated people from unvaccinated people. If vaccines are effective (95% effective in Pfizer’s case), then, vaccinated people face little risk from unvaccinated people.

If the vaccines are ineffective, then why should anyone get them?

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President Biden has issued a flurry of executive orders related to climate change, including one designating climate change a national security threat andone rejoining the Paris Accord.

The primary security threat by this new climate-change name looks the same as the leading national security threat in traditional terms: China. The totalitarian Communist dictatorship is responsible for almost 30% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

China’s emissions are not only the world’s most, but they are increasing every year. U.S. emissions are about half as much and have been decreasing for over a decade.

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President Trump finalized a "most favored nation (MFN)" or "best price," prescription drug pricing rule on Nov. 20. The goal of the MFN concept is to deliver fair drug prices to Americans. The MFN best-price concept mandates the same price for Americans and wealthy Europeans, who have been paying about one-third of what Americans pay. It does so by empowering Medicare to require drug sellers to give it the "best" (lowest) price charged any other buyer.

The MFN construct does not diminish drug company profits, which fund critical R&D and discovery of new life-saving drugs. The concept does not impose government-set prices upon drug manufacturers, who would be free to set whatever price would maximize sales and profits.

While there is controversy as to whether the just-finalized rule genuinely implements the concept, the MFN approach should be followed. Opponents of the rule should work to improve it, not oppose it.

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“The Only Good Thing About Donald Trump Is All His Policies.” So proclaimed an opinion column headline in 2018. The converse might be said of apparent President-elect Joe Biden. He may be likable but he offered little vision and said nothing about policy in his victory speech a week ago— nor much during his entire campaign.

Biden, so far, is defined by who he is not: Donald Trump.

Biden’s message consisted almost exclusively of a still-life image of safe sequester in a well-disclosed secure basement location.

Biden claims a mandate, but his prime raison d’etre will depart 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. on Jan. 20. Then what?

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