By Ray Hanania

The warnings that Russia will attack Ukraine have been much like forecasts of the TV meteorologists. They can predict snow, but how intense or light they often get wrong. Schools close. Some parents stay home from work, but the snowfall is light.

We live in Chicagoland, folks. It snows! It always has. We’ve seen some real storms but what we have been seeing lately seems pretty much mild and manageable.

Every day, we’re told, a Russian attack is imminent “in the next day or so.”

Everyone is focused on the apparent plans that Russian tyrant Vladimir Putin has to revive the old Soviet Communist empire when he is not killing rivals with radiation poisoning in cities around the world.

Ray Hanania

But this crisis isn’t just about Putin. It is about President Joe Biden, who benefits from the crisis to offset his past problems.

As we enter the midterm elections this year — what we are not talking about when we talk about Ukraine — is Biden’s failed policy on Afghanistan, where tyranny and religious fanaticism that empowered terrorists has returned.

What we are not talking about is the failed efforts to restore the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action agreement with the terrorist regime in Iran. Iran has been dragging its feet in the Vienna negotiations since they began nine months ago and advancing its uranium enrichment to the point where even Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has warned it will reach the point where an agreement becomes irrelevant.

Domestically, Biden has been unable to gather the votes needed to pass the Build Back Better plan, which he claims will help America’s economic recovery. He can’t get the whole package through because he can’t keep his party together.

But then there is the Ukrainian “crisis.” Every day that Americans fear the breakout of war, we are not talking about Biden’s failure in Afghanistan, the expansion of terrorist Iran or the erosion of his political base as we enter the midterm elections.

The midterm elections, as you know, are important because in nearly every presidential term, with only a few exceptions, the political party that holds the White House, this year the Democrats, lose control of the House and Senate to the opposition, in this case, the Republicans.

If you think negotiations with Iran have been bad, wait until the Republicans take over the House and the Senate. America will be in worsened polarization.

You can’t blame the Republicans alone for the polarization. You have to blame the Democrats, too. It seems no one cares about the country more than they care about their politics.

Democrats keep exaggerating the Jan. 6 violence as an “insurrection” (meaning an orchestrated, organized violent assault); when in fact it was an act of unprecedented violence from some of the thousands of demonstrators who gathered to protest the presidential election results.

The media was so biased against claims of vote fraud — something inherent in American election systems across this country — that it fueled the belief that somehow the election was stolen.

Meanwhile, the Democrats did nothing about the months-long violence that was fueled by George Floyd’s murder when thousands and thousands of protesters destroyed, burned down and vandalized businesses, and killed police and civilians.

They were just expressing their rage, or letting off “justified” steam.

The media has exaggerated the cries of the left while marginalizing and demonizing the cries of the right.

There is a middle ground, but the mainstream news media is not there as they should be.

Among the questions not being asked are those involving Biden’s controversy-plagued son, Hunter, who has engaged in millions of dollars in consulting contracts in Ukraine.

Miranda Devine, whose father, Frank Devine, was a friend of mine when he ran the Chicago Sun-Times under right-wing media mogul Rupert Murdoch, wrote an eye-opening book you should read called “Laptop from Hell.”

The book is about what Hunter had left on a laptop that a computer store owner said he brought in weeks before his father announced his candidacy for the presidency. But Hunter, who had a drug problem, according to the book, never picked up the laptop. The computer store owner, who held conservative political views, owned it and made it available to Biden’s critics.

Few media would explore those facts because they didn’t want to hurt Biden’s chances of defeating the blowhard and petty former President Donald Trump.

How does this all tie into Ukraine? Like most conspiracy concerns, we won’t know for many decades. By then, who knows what will happen in Ukraine?

Check out Ray Hanania’s columns and political podcasts at hanania.com.