THESE GUN CRAZED DIS-UNITED STATES...

 

Getting ready for a prairie dog mass attack.... or a feral pig...

The Second Amendment absolutists can not marshal any legitimate argument against raising the legal age to purchase firearms, banning assault weapons, banning large magazines, expanded background checks, or red flag laws.   Instead they rely on absurd contentions like South Dakota Republican Senator John Thune's defense of AR 15's for "shooting prairie dogs" or Louisiana Republican Bill Cassidy's claim that they are essential for killing "feral pigs."   Perhaps those senators and their gun loving constituents are also spectacularly bad shots, which is how they justify allowing the public to purchase extra large magazines for these weapons of war.   Another refrain from the gun obsessives is that any regulation- no matter how innocuous and inconsequential- would lead America down a "slippery slope" to yanking all guns out of the homes and armories of every American citizen waiting to defend his or her home against the hordes erupting from lawless cities, murderous rapists and burglars, and a potentially tyrannical government which apparently can be stymied by a few homeowners with an AR 15 hanging over the mantle.  

    The obvious rejoinder is that every law and every regulation can be likened to starting down a slippery slope.    Speed limits on our highways, requiring seat belts and air bags could lead to automobile confiscation.   Banning pouring toxic waste into a river could lead to the end of all manufacturing in America and a new Depression.    And so on.   However, there is a slippery slope in America- but it's not one covered in good intentions and government regulations.   It's covered in blood.  The blood of our children.  The blood of police officers and security guards shot by suicidal bullet proof vest wearing maniacs wielding AR 15's and firing cop killer bullets.    The blood of over 40,000 annually who die from firearms, including three year olds accidentally shooting their five  year old siblings with the family .40 caliber Glock.

https://usafacts.org/data/topics/security-safety/crime-and-justice/firearms/firearm-deaths/

    The fact is that an overwhelming majority of Americans want Congress to do something effective that will reduce the carnage that exists in only one ostensibly "civilized" nation on earth.   And there are plenty of possible methods that Congress can choose to enact such laws, politics notwithstanding.    The headline on a recent story was "US House passes gun bill doomed to fail in Senate."   

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-61742732

The law passed by the House of Representatives would raise the minimum age to purchase assault weapons to 21 and ban large capacity magazines.    But why should such a measure- any measure- be "doomed to die" in the United States Senate?

    Of course there is a one word answer:  filibuster.    Anything passed by the House, which still operates on the antiquated democratic principle that "majority rules," is doomed to die in the Senate, which has managed to turn minority created deadlock into its sole operating protocol, one which is more dear to the hearts of at least two ostensibly Democratic senators than children's lives or democracy itself.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/01/21/filibuster-voting-rights-manchin-sinema/

    And this is where members of the ruling majority in the House need to get creative.   First of all, no gun control bill (or voting rights bill, for that matter) should contain more than one matter.    Don't combine raising the age to purchase assault weapons with instant background checks or a ban on large magazines.   Each bill should be a stand alone, and each should be put before the Senate as one item only, no amendments allowed.   If Republicans want to vote in favor of allowing super large magazines- for which no justification has ever been offered (other than the "slippery slope" nonsense), then make them go on record.   If they want criminals and insane people to be allowed to purchase firearms without having to go through a background check, then put them on record on that, too.

    But more importantly, just as a judge tells a person jailed for civil contempt of court for defying a court order that he has "the keys to the jail cell"-   meaning that he can get out of jail simply by doing what the court has ordered, the House has the key to unlock the Senate filibuster and render it useless.   And the key is found in Article I, Section 7 of the United States Constitution:   "All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives..."

What that means is that no money can be spent by the Federal government for anything- not for that  air base in South Dakota, those Army bases in Kentucky and Texas, that levee in Louisiana, those price supports for wheat in Kansas for corn in Nebraska or in Wisconsin for milk- all states with two Republican senators- unless it originates in an appropriations bill in the House.   The House holds the ultimate power of the purse over everything, and Democrats facing an existential crisis- whether it is to the lives of our children or the existence of our democracy- should not hesitate to use it, to hold it as a Sword of Damocles over every Republican senator who refuses to vote to change Senate rules to dispose of the filibuster.     

    Conventional Democrats will argue that this would be a poison pill that would doom Democrats' hopes for mid term electoral success.   I would argue that in a world where the national media  has already buried their party's hopes to retain control of either or both houses of Congress in the midterms, presumably because media "experts" have concluded that voters care more about the price of gasoline and groceries than their freedom to live in a democracy or their own children's safety in school,  what have you got to lose?    Existential means that your existence is threatened.   Perhaps you should act accordingly.

HOW TO WIN THE MID TERMS IN 2022....

 

For anybody reading this who wants Democrats to win the midterms but doesn't know how to have an impact, try copying and pasting this and sending it to any Democratic Congressman or Senators or candidates for those offices that you can:

"Dear Representative/Senator/Candidate:

There are three things that you should keep in mind if you want to win the election for your district/state and if you want Democrats to retain control of the House of Representatives and increase the number of seats in the Senate enough to eliminate the filibuster and get voting rights legislation passed to save our democracy:

(1) You are not going to win over hard core right wingers and even making an overt effort to do so by trying to appeal to their desires will discourage the people who already believe in the cause of democracy and who are willing to support and vote for you.

(2) No data driven argument, no feat of logic, no words coming from you- or any untrusted source, no matter how correct, how verifiable, how dripping with the essence of truth or morality, will persuade enough swing voters or former Democrats who switched in the last 14 years and started voting Republican. It will take personal appeals from people just like them- Republican voters but who refuse to engage in a suicide pact, and who will go on camera and tell their fellows in a very personal appeal why they will no longer support the Republican Party or its hypocritical, lying, death dealing candidates. It is anecdotes that win elections, not statistics or positive campaign ads. You need real people, just like the voters you want to impress and recruit and sway, who will go on camera, real people who actually live in your district and in your state, and different people- not the same man or woman in every ad, but enough of them to give the voters who would otherwise reject everything you say to give them permission to see reality and to recognize the misogynistic, racist, xenophobic, bullying, lying, death cult to which they have thrown their support.

(3) Vaccinate. Don't ignore the awful, lying attack ads that will inevitably be hurled against you: "Democrats want to defund the police. Democrats want to disarm you so that the brown people from the cities or across the border can come to your suburban neighborhood and rape your women and steal your babies. Democrats are for Socialism- godless Venezuelan Socialism that will destroy your family business. Democrats are for inflation. Democrats want to turn your small children into gay trans people to win athletic contests.

Whatever the ad, don't try to outdo it: actually take the ad itself and inject parts of it- the worst parts- into your campaign ads, accompanied by an actual local citizen who is a Republican who now repents his ways who will tell his friends why the attack ad is a lie- and what the actual truth is. Try to get whatever station or platform is running the attack ad to run yours right after it. (One of my legislative proposals would actually make this mandatory on all FCC controlled television stations with the response ad to run free of charge after every attack ad. Time enough for that if you can manage to win the midterms.)

Those three ideas above should be enough, should you decide that you are willing to try something different- but not so different. The Lincoln Project has been doing things and running ads like this with some effect but with no overall support from the DNC or any PAC's with enough hundreds of millions of dollars to saturate the air waves in all 50 states. And Raphael Warnock has been a bit of an outlier with his wonderful "puppies" ad that he ran in the Fall of 2020, anticipating the awful attack ads that would be launched against him. Those efforts should have inspired the DNC to coordinate national ad campaigns- but so far, they haven't.

But just in case, here's a starter campaign ad kit (and I'm no professional marketer or ad man or campaign consultant- just a guy at a table in his house with a computer):

A man in his early 40's, wearing a plaid shirt, 5 days grown of beard mixed with gray, and a ball cap, sitting in a diner. He looks at the camera and says:

"I've been a life long Republican, voting every election for the Republican candidates. But that stops now. My wife is on dialysis for her kidney disease, and she needs a transplant. But the Republican (senator/Congressman) who represents me voted to repeal the very law- the Affordable Care Act- that has kept her alive. He supported the Republican President who created tariffs that just about bankrupted my family farm. Then he told me and my wife that we shouldn't take a vaccine, even though my wife is at risk of dying if she catches Covid. We have an 8 month old daughter and we can barely find any baby formula, but I just found out that my Republican Congressman voted against funds to make baby formula more affordable. I can't support this clown show any more. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. This Fall I'm voting for the Democrat. I want good government, not loudmouths trying to get me to hate anybody who doesn't look like me."

This ad should run in every state, in every Congressional district in the country, with variations. But every ad should feature an actual person whose story is true- Republicans who would have died, or family members would have died without the Affordable Care Act. Farmers who almost lost their farm or small businessmen who almost lost their businesses over Trump's tariffs. People hurt by the policies from Trump or who would be devastated if the Republicans regained power.

Another ad might go like this:

"I've voted Republican in every election since I turned 18. I believed what my elected officials said and I trusted them. But as I've gotten older I realized that all Republicans want to do is make me want to hate or distrust my neighbors if they don't look like me or worship the way I do or talk like me or love the same people I love. I'm a Christian and I wasn't raised that way. I have friends who are gay and friends who are straight. I work with people from different parts of the world, including immigrants from Southeast Asia, from Mexico, from Central America and from the Middle East. They are people, too: people with husbands, wives, children, who care about their families the same as I do. I'm tired of being fed a load of bull about foreigners coming to take my jobs or make me- as a white person- a second hand citizen by "replacing me." They are human beings, and as a Christian, I wasn't taught that Jesus wanted us to hate our fellow human beings. As I said, I've voted Republican in every election since I was old enough to vote. But that party scares me, and all they are trying to do is win elections by scaring other people like me. I've had enough, and I'm never voting for them again."

Another ad would feature a retired police officer:

"My name is ______________. I worked for _______ police department for 35 years. I had always voted Republican. But that day stopped when Republicans in Congress dumped all over my fellow men and women in blue who were attempting to defend their very lives against a T***p incited mob that attacked the Capitol and physically battered police officers in uniform. As for those Republican ads claiming that Democrats want to "defund the police," I challenge those liars to come up with a single legislative proposal in Congress to lower funding for any police department. The truth is that those Republican hypocrites who claim to back the blue voted against every Democratic bill that tried to increase funds and assistance for local police departments. Well, fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice- then you're a lying Republican hypocrite, and you're never getting my vote again."

I'm sure that Madison Avenue has more than a few talented ad people who can come up with dozens of ads as telling as those. Every one a tug at the heart strings. Every one a door slammed in the face of a vicious, lying Republican attack ad.

Thank you for your time and your attention.

Sincerely yours,

ONE SMALL STEP.... AND THEN ANOTHER....

In a world where it seems the only creative legislative geniuses are the pernicious devils intent on thwarting a woman's right to choose- witness the brilliant Texas law which divorced the State entirely from stopping (then) legal abortions but farmed out the task to legal vigilantes empowered to file civil suits against any person providing any aid of any kind to a woman seeking an abortion-  it is long past time for the people on the moral high ground to start thinking outside of the box.    Which brings us to the latest massacre of school children.   Thoughts and prayers aren't going to get it.  Protests won't accomplish anything.   Pious rhetoric from top Democrats won't save a single life.

No, it's time to use the tools that we have, and to use them effectively.   First and foremost, the House of Representatives, the only chamber in our national legislature capable of creating and passing civic minded legislation designed to help all Americans, should go small.   Instead of crafting bills that include everything and the kitchen sink, a process which allows any Republican Senate demagogue or self-aggrandizing Senate Democrat (I'm looking at West Virginia and Arizona) to righteously declaim their opposition to that one small part of the bill that somehow they find so odious that they are willing to allow democracy itself to be overthrown or school children to be shot to pieces, the House must pass a number of separate bills, each addressing a single issue, each unassailable by any rational argument, each designed to put any opponent who votes against it smack dab in the middle of a campaign commercial in his or her next election from which there will be no wriggle room.

Start with things that are easy and massively popular, such as instant background checks to prevent the insane and felons from acquiring firearms.   Don't even include private sales in the first bill passed.   And include funding from an already existing source of revenue to pay for the expense that private businesses may have to bear for having to order the technical apparatus- such as a telephone- before they sell that next AR-15 with three large magazines to the hyper mentally ill 18 year old who can't wait to go to the neighborhood elementary school to wreak havoc and horror or the mother of a 17 year old excitedly planning his next field trip to a neighboring state to shoot people down in the street in the name of "protecting property."

Next, move on to a bill requiring instant background checks for all private sales.   Set up a federal hotline to make it easy to accomplish.   And include very minor penalties for violations- a misdemeanor and a $1,000 fine, the same penalty as one gets for a bar fight or driving on a suspended license- in the bill so that it's enforceable, but like Texas, also give a private right of action to any person or family member of a person injured by a firearm sold in violation of this law.

Move on up to a bill that will put some teeth into keeping firearms from small children, the insane, and criminals:    a bill that removes all civil immunity from any gun manufacturer or gun dealer who manufactures or sells any weapon which is not child proof, which can be fired by any person, and which is used- whether legally owned or not- in an accident or a crime.   We need to require all newly manufactured and sold firearms to have at least the same level of security as our smart phones do:  a fingerprint or a code which must be entered to make it operable.   And make the weapon remotely disableable by the legal owner, like the device that some car models have.  That should prevent the next five year old from accidentally shooting herself or a sibling and the next gun thief from being able to profit from his crime.

From there, the legislators should take note of the hostility of the current super majority of the Supreme Court to common sense gun laws yet their peculiar embrace of a word that was unheard of when I was in law school:  "textualism."   This is the seemingly logical  idea that judges should not "create" law but should adhere to the original text of the United States Constitution, but which in practice means that justices are free to reject any legislation from a state or Congress with which they disagree on the grounds that there was nothing said about it in the original Constitution in 1787 or the Bill of Rights in 1791.    Of course, in those days, women were virtually property and could not vote or hold office, African slaves were counted as three-fifths of a human being for purposes of representation in the House of Representatives (they were referred to as "all other persons" because the word "slave" never appeared in the Constitution- not even in the 13th Amendment which prohibited "involuntary servitude" in 1865), and senators were not elected but were selected by state legislatures.   In other words, Samuel Alito's vision of Heaven.

Creative legislators can hoist the so called conservative justices on their own "textualism" petard.  Although the Second Amendment states "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed," it says nothing about what the word "Arms" means.    I propose defining "Arms" as they were originally intended in 1791 ("textualists" are also referred to as "originalists" because of their dogged devotion to whatever their judicial minds perceive the "original framers" of the Constitution intended).    Arms should include single shot muskets and rifles which load from the muzzle, not the breech.   None will have magazines (the word did not exist with regard to hand held weapons but referred to where the ammunition was stored on a ship or in an armory).   

With a stroke of a pen, every modern weapon from a 15 bullet Glock hand gun  to an AR-15 with a banana clip with 30 rounds will be outlawed.   And I'd love to be present at the oral argument at the Supreme Court when the "textualists" have to deal with their own terms being hurled back at them in a case brought by  deprived NRA enthusiasts and the gun manufacturers who enable them.

Legislation can also be crafted to limit the muzzle velocity of firearms sold to the public to decrease their lethality.   Bullets now leaving the barrel at 3900 feet per second for a high powered rifle and over 1000 feet per second for a typical handgun can be restricted- a "restrictor plate" so to speak, like the ones used to keep NASCAR drivers from exceeding absurd miles per hour limits- to something far less lethal- about 100 feet per second.   I dare any right wing Supreme Court justice to parse the Second Amendment and find in the original text any right to fire a bullet at over 1,000 feet per second- over 680 miles per hour, faster than the fastest commercial jetliner.    Which of course, also did not exist in 1791.

Finally, even if that doesn't do the trick, the House can pass a bill that outlaws or strictly controls the sale of the items that allow modern firearms to function:  everything from gun oil to cleaning brushes to the spare parts for any portion of a modern firearm, including firing pins.   Imagine that for a moment:  every gun lover will be stuck trying to figure out how to clean the barrel of a fired weapon without the tools to do so.   Eventually, the weapon will become inoperable.   But the gun enthusiast can still "bear his Arms" even if they won't actually fire and hurt somebody.

YOU DON'T NEED TO BE A WEATHERMAN....

 

[NOTE:  I wrote this essay the week before the story broke about the draft opinion of the Supreme Court which will reverse Roe v. Wade and end a woman's Constitutional Right to choose whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term.   It was prescient- including my prediction as to the 5-4 division to overturn- but not that much.   As Bob Dylan famously wrote, "It doesn't take a Weatherman to see which way the wind is blowing.]

I'm a liberal.  I'm progressive.   I've voted for a Democrat for president for fifty years.  I'm a lawyer who has made a career out of representing the aggrieved in civil rights cases for more than four decades, and I've done volunteer work as an attorney for the ACLU.

And I very much want to see the United States Supreme Court overturn 49 years of precedent and overrule its landmark abortion rights decision in Roe v. Wade.

This is not a contradiction of my values or goals.   But there are three reasons why it would be an excellent decision for the future of this country.

First is the pragmatic choice- not quite a Sophie's choice- but a choice, between saving democracy and protecting a woman's right to choose whether or not to terminate a pregnancy during the first trimester (no excuse needed) or second trimester (some state regulation is allowed).    If the Supreme Court issues a decision overruling Roe v. Wade- and I predict that it will, in a five -four decision with Chief Justice John Roberts joining the three justices appointed by Democratic presidents in a stinging dissent- then there will be huge political consequences.   The most obvious consequence is that a large segment of the somnolent public will awaken to the fact that they have just lost a woman's constitutional right of privacy that will have a direct negative impact on the lives and pocket books of both men and women.   And that may be just the tipping point to motivate voters to get out to the polls this November and vote for Democrats for both state and federal offices.   Because nothing motivates a voter more than having his or her personal life or fortune upended by actions of a political party, and in this case, there is no confusion over which political party overtly named justices to the Supreme Court for the precise goal of overturning Roe v. Wade and which party has been defending a woman's right to choose.

And if enough voters are motivated to go to the polls to swing just a couple of United States Senate races and a few swing Congressional districts, the Democrats can not only hold on to their control of both bodies of the legislature, but they might also increase their majority to the 52 in the Senate required to get to a vote to repeal or severely limit the filibuster rule which has cost Democrats  any chance of getting their voting rights bills to a vote in the Senate.   Because if they get to the magical number of 52 then ostensible Democratic Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona will lose their stranglehold veto power over attempts to amend the filibuster rule which now requires a 60 vote supermajority to even have a vote over any of the bills the Democrats have passed in the House to protect voting rights.   

And the stakes are high:  those bills are necessary to protect the future of democracy in the United States.    I value keeping this country a democracy and continuing to allow free and fair elections, open to all eligible voters, more than I value a woman's right to choose whether or not to continue with a pregnancy.   Because if we lose democracy in this country, and if Republicans are allowed to suppress voting and even overturn elections they lose through pernicious anti-democratic laws passed by the state legislatures they control, then a woman's right to choose will have no chance of surviving anyway.   

It is noteworthy that the greatest block of single issue voters which have supported the Republican Party the last 40+ years has been those people who consider themselves "right to life" proponents.   Many if not most of those are sincere.   Others are demagogues who don't actually want to win this issue, they just depend on it election cycle after election cycle for money and voter support from those who are sincere.   A ruling overturning Roe v. Wade would, in effect, kick the chair out from under the monolithic block which has been relied upon by the Republicans who have demagogued this issue for over 40 years.    A win in the Supreme Court would mean that those "pro-life" voters would now be free to look at other issues:   protecting the environment and the earth from catastrophic climate change; expanding health care; increasing the minimum wage; opening up more avenues to a free or less expensive post high school education; even common sense gun control to stop mass murders n our high schools and elementary schools.  All are issues where Republicans are consistently on the wrong side of public polls and Democrats are on the moral and popular high ground.

A second reason why a decision overturning Roe v. Wade would be a long term benefit for democracy and civil rights in this country is that it will now be seen as a practical necessity to enact legislation to achieve the heretofore unrealistic goal of expanding membership in the Supreme Court by adding four justices  to end the stranglehold that six Republican appointed  justices have, five of whom were appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote.   Bush, who lost by 500,000 to Al Gore in 2000, appointed Chief Justice John Roberts and Samuel Alito; Trump, who lost by more than three million to Hillary Clinton in 2016, appointed Neil Gorsuch, Brett (I love beer) Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney (confirmed almost before national treasure and Court icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg was laid to rest) Barrett.     

If four justices are added- and I predict that it won't take even a few days after the opinion overturning Roe v. Wade is issued that legislation accomplishing this will be put in the hopper in the House-  then the justices who have managed to eviscerate campaign finance reforms and the voting rights laws will no longer wield the power to obstruct legitimate legislation or use their shadow docket to enact their ideological goals.    Two cases in particular, both 5-4 decisions, can be overruled, restoring some sanity to our electoral process:   Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission in 2010, which removed all financial restraints on "dark money" which has allowed right wing billionaires to anonymously influence elections; and  Shelby County v. Holder in 2013, in which Chief Justice Roberts decided that racism was dead and led the right wing majority in invalidating  section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act which required state and local governments which had historically engaged in overt voter suppression of minorities to have to "pre-clear" their changes in voting laws and regulations with the Justice Department before they were allowed to go into effect.   That ruling was followed within days by state legislatures enacting laws to suppress minority voting rights, and it has only snowballed in the years since then, with worse and more devious legislation being enacted yearly in states with Republican controlled legislatures and governors.

Adding four more justices would mean that the three justices appointed by presidents who actually won the popular vote will now be in the majority- seven out of thirteen, and the six who have done their best to politicize and delegitimize the Court will suddenly find themselves powerless to block or overturn government environmental protection regulations, to infringe on the religious rights of minorities, or to allow further state suppression of minority participation in elections.   

A reversal of Roe v. Wade by a cabal of overtly political justices, all carefully groomed and prescreened by the right wing Federalist Society would mean that there would be no hesitancy by President Biden to support and eventually sign such a bill adding the four justices necessary to end their pernicious control of the highest court in the land.

Then there is a third reason:   in my opinion, this has been the only issue in the last 40 years where there is a legitimate argument that can be made that Republicans and their pro-life supporters, including Catholics and evangelical Christians, hold the moral high ground. Their sole contention is that they are defending the sanctity of human life.  On the other side Democrats contend that they are defending a "woman's right to choose."  But the latter's arguments are based on quicksand.    When I ran for public office decades ago, I used to half-joke that the definition of a "conservative" is a person whose concern for life ends at birth.    This has been pretty much true, as far too many self styled "pro-life" conservatives oppose Medicaid expansion, stymie gun control- even to save the lives of massacred school children, and are  huge supporters of the death penalty.   

  But the argument to protect the life inside a woman's womb was  never illogical or immoral.   I've always felt that Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided in the first place because the arbitrary decision to create a woman's "Constitutional right" to choose to terminate a pregnancy  depended on what date it was on her biological calendar.    Justice Blackmun, who wrote the opinion, created an unfettered right to an abortion during the first trimester of a pregnancy, a somewhat state regulated right during the second trimester, and a very limited right- the mother's health or life must be at risk- during the final trimester.   And these arbitrary deadlines were  based solely on a justice's lay opinion regarding the "viability" of the fetus within her.   And that viability depended on advances in medical science, not on the law or the Constitution.  Under the reasoning in Roe v. Wade, when the day came that any fetus at any stage was "viable" in the sense that medical science could take that fetus to term even if were medically removed, still alive, from a woman's womb, then the Constitution and the right to privacy invoked in that ruling were irrelevant.   Because a woman would then have no more right to terminate the fetus's development outside her womb than she would have to terminate the life of a one day old baby which she had delivered the traditional way.

And to me, this was all the difference.  But if Roe v. Wade is overturned, henceforth a woman's "right to choose" will only involve decisions concerning her own body and not decisions she chooses to make regarding a separate life created by her and the father.   And this will free up a large block of single issue voters who are rational and actually have a social conscience to vote for Democrats who will actually enact health and safety regulations to protect lives after they are born.

IT'S LONG PAST TIME TO "MAN UP" FOR NATO AND THE WEST

 Dear Editor (of the New York Times):

It is well past time that the United States and NATO declare a "no fly" zone over Ukraine for Russian helicopters, jets- and missiles.   Regardless of whether the Ukraine is allowed to join NATO- and it would be a good idea to give them immediate provisional membership- the Russians have given the world legal cause to act militarily to stop their invasion and to stop the murder of Ukraine's civilians.   Russia's bombing Ukraine nuclear power plants does not just endanger the Ukraine, it endangers the air of every neighboring country, several of which are NATO members.  Russia's indiscriminate shelling of residential areas of Ukraine's major cities and forcing civilians to flee the country by the millions constitutes an attempt at the destruction of the Ukraine's people:  genocide.  This legally allows the U.S. to act under international treaties to which we are a signatory.  It's what gave us legal permission in the 1990's to use U.S. air power to stop the Serbian genocide in Bosnia.

 

    Putin can threaten and bluster all he wants.   However, he should not be able to gain the fruits of his brutal invasion by repeated threats which would require Russia's top military brass to carry out; and it's clear he's not sure of that backing.   But the only thing that will save Ukraine- and the rest of us- is having the courage to tell Putin that if he takes any military act against any NATO country in "retaliation" for NATO's enforcing a no-fly zone over the entirety of Ukraine then he will be risking a military response by NATO.  He should be warned that NATO won't be limited to enforcing a no fly zone by taking out any Russian aircraft or missile sites which defy it.

(I wrote this on March 5, 2022, only twelve days after the Russian invasion began.   It is now April 17, 2022, forty-three days later.    It is true now more than ever.)

WHAT TO DO TO GET THE RUSSIANS OUT OF UKRAINE

(Prime Minister Zelenskyy meeting in Kiev March 15, 2022, with prime ministers brave enough to fly there through Russian bombardment) 

Dear Editor: (to New York Times)  March 15, 2022

I hold no public office.   I'm not a celebrity, and I'm not an expert in any field.  I have no cachet. I'm just a guy sitting in front of a computer set up on his dining room table.  So I more than realize how remote the possibility that these words will see print in your newspaper.   I have, however, studied history, including biographies of many great historical figures and leaders, including Jefferson, Adams, Churchill, Eisenhower and many others, and including histories of wars over the last thousand years, having majored in the subject in college and having read for pleasure in the 49 years since.   Which is why, knowing how many intelligent, knowledgeable, and well meaning people are in the top positions in our government, it is frustrating to watch western countries, including the United States, have both a failure of imagination and of will in dealing with a rogue dictatorship, Russia.   Had Europe and the U.S. acted eight years ago when Russia first invaded Ukraine and seized Crimea, had they cut off all shipments of Russian oil and gas, all air travel, international financial connections, and sanctioned Putin's oligarchs,  we wouldn't be where we are now.

So on the remote chance this will see the light of day and actually be read by someone who can- and will- act to get us out of the current crisis, I write.   And remember this:  as a then Senator John F. Kennedy said in Indianapolis on April 12, 1959:  “The Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word ‘crisis.’ One brush stroke stands for danger; the other for opportunity.”   (Turns out, per a professor at my old college, he was linguistically wrong, but this happens to be one of those aphorisms which is useful, right or wrong.)

But to get out of this unfolding train wreck of a human catastrophe in Ukraine we need to act both short term and long term.   In the short term we need to stop playing poker with Putin by showing him all of our cards in advance, telling him everything we won't do and never leaving him guessing or worried about what we might do.  By taking off the table a NATO military response that would be wholly confined to the geographic borders of Ukraine,  we have given carte blanche  to Russia's attacks on civilians and cities.   Instead of giving up before even trying to stymie the invasion, NATO should inform the Russians both to its leaders and in messages that will be delivered directly to the Russian people (somehow I'm fairly confident we have the technology to do that; if a brave Russian television employee,  Marina Ovsyannikova, can hold up a sign on live television that tells the viewers that they are being lied to, surely we  have the capacity to do something more far reaching)  that NATO will be sending relief columns by both truck and train to every besieged and shelled city.  The rescuers will be armed only with defensive weapons and will not fire on any Russian troops unless fired upon.  They will deliver food, medical supplies and personnel, portable generators, drinking water, and everything else that Ukraine  needs except for weapons.  

Moreover, the brave trip to Kiev of the Polish, Czech and Slovenian prime ministers should inspire President Biden to do likewise and announce that he will be flying to visit President Zelenskyy for several days.   Does anyone seriously think Putin would risk war with the United States by firing on our president?   And if Putin did, shouldn't our president be willing to risk making the same sacrifice he may have to ask of members of our military, especially in the cause of peace and of preventing genocide? 

In one swoop, without facing the Hobson's choice of two unpalatable extremes- doing nothing and watching helplessly as civilians are slaughtered, starved, and conquered, or enforcing a no-fly zone and risking triggering war with Russia (which would not be a "World War" by any stretch of the meaning of that phrase, but which would be calamitous nonetheless), NATO and leaders of its countries will have stopped the Russian invasion in its tracks,  stopped the barrage of missiles and shells on Ukraine's cities, all with means which are solely non-violent, but which show both imagination and courage.   Because it would be Russia that would be risking a full NATO overwhelming response that would wipe out their forces in Ukraine in a matter of days, if not hours, if they fire on peaceful relief columns or the leaders of NATO countries, including our President.   And it will be on Putin to try to figure out if it's a bluff, risking everything, including his life, if he guesses wrong.

    Long term we should make it clear as soon as the firing stops that we will not end any sanctions until Russia has not only stopped the invasion, but has removed its troops from all of occupied Ukraine, including the Crimea and the eastern provinces.   Finally, we should not restore full status to Russia on the world stage until it has delivered Putin to The Hague to stand trial for war crimes, and it has made reparations to Ukraine for the loss of life and the destruction of cities.

From my dining room table...  

Sincerely yours,

James Finkelstein

Attorney at Law

but just a guy sitting at a computer in his dining room

(post script:  they didn't run it, of course.  But at least Biden made it all the way to Poland and to refugee camps this week)

WHAT THE DEMOCRATS NEED TO DO NOW

 

It's time to start kicking some Elephant Ass....

The thing about an "existential threat" is that it is, by definition, a threat to one's own existence.    Some threats are awful, but not necessarily existential.  For instance, climate change threatens the lives of a significant percentage of life- plant and animal- on this planet.   Not all life, not even close to most of it.   But enough to make the losses catastrophic if we do nothing.    The pandemic is not an existential threat, except to the more than 800,000 Americans and millions (out of over 7 billion) on Earth who are no longer in existence.    Nor is America's pathetic health care system- which causes tens or hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths a year- an existential threat to the entire country.   But it's still a slow moving catastrophe, none the less.

However, our democracy- our republic- is under an existential threat.   Once the Republicans get a taste of blood by using their  newly created Jim Crow 2.0  tools to reverse the results of an election by controlling the vote counting- by reversing an election a Democrat has won with a false claim of fraud, then throwing out enough votes to declare their candidate the winner- then for all intents and purposes, our form of government where the people get to choose their leaders and not vice versa- is on life support.   And only going downhill.

So what do Democrats do when the very existence of our form of government is threatened, and when their continued hold on offices they won in fair elections is becoming more tenuous by the day?  Answer:   we do nothing but wring our hands and complain on tv and in print about the unfairness of it all.

But here's the thing:  we have more than enough tools in our arsenal to stop this madness and to save our country.   However, so far no one with the power to deploy them has either the intelligence or guts to use any of them.   For example:  under our Constitution, in Article I, Section 7, every bill that appropriates money for everything the federal government does must originate in the House of Representatives.     No bill=no money=no expenditure for whatever the people who support a program or expense need or want.   What if- just spitballing here- the Democrats had decided to pass a Defense Department budget that included money for paying the troops' salaries, for their housing, medical care and other benefits, and for their training- but nothing else.   Not a dime for Lockheed or Grumman or that fancy fighter or submarine or tank or any other super expensive shiny bauble that U.S. taxpayers are being annually hosed to finance.    Think for one moment how the overlords of the Republican Party, those who front the money to finance those heinous lying political ads, would react if the spigot of billions were suddenly cut off.   Cut off with a promise that it would be turned on again, but only after enough Republicans voted to change the filibuster rule to allow a vote on the two voting rights bills that the Republicans have prevented the Senate from voting on.

Or think how those Republican senators would react if the Commander in Chief, President Biden, decided to move every single soldier, sailor, and airman out of their bases in places like Florida, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, and Kentucky, eliminating the hundreds of millions of dollars they inject into local economies, and relocated them into states with senators who support voting rights.   Biden wouldn't have to close a single base.   But no one could prevent him from emptying them of the free spending troops who support the economies in those states and letting them spend their money elsewhere.   

That's just  two ideas off the top of my head.   I'm not a public official or a pundit with cachet.   Just a guy who knows that if the threat truly is existential, then it might be time to actually do something about it.