Before he appeared at his first solo news conference of 2022, President Joe Biden knew he had a communications problem he had to deal with.

Namely, how to get off the defensive.

How to avoid spending his time with the White House press corps defending his decisions and explaining his actions as allegations of failure, one after another, were tossed up at him?

Biden entered knowing what issues would be paramount and what questions would be raised:

Why had he been unable to control a coronavirus pandemic now killing 2,000 Americans a day? Why was he unable to contain an inflation eating up the wages, salaries and savings of American families at a yearly rate of 7%? Why was he unable to secure a southern border that 150,000 illegal immigrants were crossing every month?

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If the left believed that draping the Capitol riot of Jan. 6, 2021, around the neck of former President Donald Trump and the party that refused to repudiate him would sink the GOP, it appears to have miscalculated.

For, as the left painted the Capitol riot as an "armed insurrection," "domestic terrorism," "attempted coup," and political atrocity that stands beside Pearl Harbor and 9/11 as "a day that will live in infamy," Republicans were displacing the Democrats as America's first party.

Democrats began 2021 as the preferred party of 49% of the country. Only 40% identified as Republicans.

When 2022 began, the standings had been reversed.

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In 2014, when Russian President Vladimir Putin responded to a U.S.-backed coup that ousted a pro-Russian regime in Kyiv by occupying Crimea, President Barack Obama did nothing.

When Putin aided secessionists in the Donbass in seizing Luhansk and Donetsk, once again, Obama did nothing.

Why did we not come to the military assistance of Ukraine?

Because Ukraine is not a member of NATO. We had no obligation to come to its aid. And to have intervened militarily on the side of Ukraine would have risked a war with Russia we had no desire to fight.

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"The next few days ... will mark a turning point in this nation's history," said President Joe Biden in his Atlanta speech to reframe the debate in Congress on voting rights legislation and the filibuster.

He went on: "Will we choose democracy over autocracy, light over shadows, justice over injustice? ... I know where I stand. ... I will defend ... our democracy against all enemies -- foreign and, yes, domestic."

And on this issue of light over shadows, good versus evil:

"Where will the institution of the United States Senate stand? ...

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After the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and the Warsaw Pact dissolved, the breakup of the USSR began. But the dissolution did not stop with the 14 Soviet "republics" declaring their independence of Moscow.

Decomposition had only just begun.

Transnistria broke away from Moldova. South Ossetia and Abkhazia seceded from Georgia. Chechnya broke free of Russia but was restored to Moscow's control after two savage wars. Crimea and the Donbass were severed from Ukraine.

Besides these post-Cold War amputations, assisted by Russia, what do Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia have in common?

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