General

Is Ukraine’s Partition Zelenskyy’s Fate?

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Russian President Vladimir Putin appears less pressured to meet and talk. What does this tell us? Zelenskyy does not believe further fighting will benefit Ukraine as much as it will cost his country. And he wants the war over.

“It’s time to meet, time to talk … time to restore territorial integrity … for Ukraine,” said President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday.

Zelenskyy added that the need to negotiate was even greater for Moscow. “Otherwise, Russia’s losses will be so huge that several generations will not be enough to rebound.”

According to the Pentagon, Russia has lost 7,000 soldiers; Kyiv puts the figure at 14,000 dead.

Still, Russian President Vladimir Putin appears less pressured to meet and talk. What does this tell us?

Zelenskyy does not believe further fighting will benefit Ukraine as much as it will cost his country. And he wants the war over.

As for Putin, as Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said Sunday, “He’s not been able to achieve the goals that he wants to achieve as rapidly as he wants to achieve them.” Putin wants more time.

The Russian president began the invasion of Ukraine with Crimea already annexed and the enclaves of Luhansk and Donetsk having already declared their independence of Kyiv.

Since the invasion began, however, Putin’s forces have besieged but not taken Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, or second largest city, Kharkiv.

Yet, Russian troops are now in Mariupol on the Sea of Azov, having completed a land bridge from Russia through the Donbas to Crimea and, from there, halfway to Odessa, the last major Ukrainian port on the Black Sea.

While the Ukrainian army and citizens have put up fiercer resistance than was anticipated in Moscow, Russia is not losing this war.

Measured by territorial gains, Putin is winning

He has not captured Kyiv or Kharkiv, but he has expanded the Russian-controlled territories of Donetsk, Luhansk and Crimea that he had at the start of his invasion.

While Russia’s costs and casualties have been far greater than was anticipated, Putin has added to the Ukrainian lands he held when the war began. And Mother Russia has not lost an inch of land in this war.

“How does this thing end?” Gen. David Petraeus famously asked on the road to Baghdad.

No political solution appears more likely than a new partition of Ukraine, with lands east of the Dnieper River and along the coasts of the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea being ceded to Moscow, and the west of Ukraine being declared a neutral nation like Austria or Finland in the Cold War.

The problem with this probable outcome is that Zelenskyy has ruled out any territorial concessions or land transfers from Ukraine to Russia. And he seeks to “restore,” not to make permanent, the 2014 amputations of Crimea and the Donbas.

The dilemma: Zelenskyy probably cannot survive ceding control of any Ukrainian land to Russia. And Putin probably cannot survive a failure in peace talks to expand the Ukrainian holdings with which he began the war.

The “territorial integrity” of Ukraine is the crucial issue in ending this war.

And it is precisely here where it appears impossible for both sides to come to terms.

The one issue on which both parties will likely agree in any peace settlement is the issue that should have been agreed to — to prevent the war: a formal declaration by Kyiv that it will never join a NATO alliance created to contain Russia and, if necessary, defeat Russia in a war.

A frustrated and enraged President Joe Biden has taken to calling Putin a “killer,” a “murderous dictator” and a “war criminal” who has launched an “immoral war” — comments the Kremlin calls “unforgivable”

Such rhetoric would seem to rule out any role for U.S. diplomacy in negotiating the end to this war. Other nations — Israel, Turkey, France, Germany — have maintained regular relations and constant contact with Putin, who sits and broods atop the world’s largest nuclear arsenal.

Consider the moral dilemma the U.S. has put itself in.

Our president says Russia is led by “a war criminal,” conducting an “immoral” war in which deliberate atrocities are committed at hospitals, schools, kindergartens and art theaters.

Yet, the U.S. and NATO will not provide weapons to Ukraine, including secondhand MiGs, that might cause Russia to retaliate against us or NATO or risk World War III or risk Russia’s use of tactical atomic weapons.

Because, pillaged and persecuted though Ukraine may be, it is not a member of NATO.

If Latvia, however, with 5% of Ukraine’s population, is encroached upon, we will engage Russia militarily, and to hell with the risk of World War III or Russia’s possible retaliation with atomic weapons.

In war, the moral is to the material as three is to one, said Napoleon. Unfortunately, what George Bernard Shaw said cynically also appears to be true: In war, God is on the side of the big battalions.

Zelenskyy probably cannot survive signing away the title to any Ukrainian land, be it Crimea or the Donbas. And Putin likely cannot survive not bringing home new territory from a Russian “victory.”

Again, perhaps the one issue on which almost all now agree is that Ukraine renounce its right to join the NATO alliance.

US Vital Interests Dictate an End to This War

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While the threat to the independence and territorial integrity of Ukraine may be an existential one for that nation, it is no such peril to our nation. Indeed, if one were to enumerate the greatest threats to the republic to which all of us pledge allegiance, the outcome of that war halfway around the world would not make the list.

Speaking to Congress, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy asked for many things from the United States.

He wants us to establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine. He wants the Soviet-era MiGs that NATO allies (from their Warsaw Pact days) have in their arsenals. He wants Russian-made S-300 antiaircraft systems in NATO inventories transferred to Kyiv.

He wants the U.S. to sanction every Russian official who does not repudiate this war on Ukraine. He wants all U.S. companies to pull out of Russia. He wants all Russian-made goods kept out of U.S. markets.

In short, Zelenskyy wants the U.S. as a full-fledged ally in Ukraine’s war against the Russian invaders.

But while America also seeks a defeat for Russia’s aggression, President Joe Biden has a higher imperative: to avoid a war between the United States and the world’s other nuclear superpower, Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

On Jan. 20, 2021, Joe Biden took an oath:

“I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

And when the issue arose as to whether he, as president and commander in chief, would transfer MiG-29s to Ukrainians fighting Russians for their independence and freedom, Biden said no.

“The idea that we’re going to send in offensive equipment and have planes and tanks and trains going in with American pilots and American crews — just understand, don’t kid yourself, no matter what y’all say, that’s called World War III,” Biden told House Democrats in Philadelphia.

Biden was saying that, no matter how noble the cause or how just the war Ukrainians are fighting, his first duty is to America. And as president of the United States, he will put U.S. national interests first and not risk a war with the largest nuclear power on earth.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s reaction: Biden runs “the most timid, cowardly and pathetic administration in modern American history.”

If our “enormous capacity” and “very competent people … were unleashed,” said Gingrich, “we would…end up defeating Putin, and he would end up being ousted from power by his own government. But instead, we are intimidated by him. We allow him to get away with war crimes.”

In this Ukraine war, Gingrich is the interventionist, and Biden is putting his own country, America, first. On this one, put me down with Joe.

GOP Sen. Marco Rubio has also spoken out for America First:

[A no-fly zone] means flying AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control Systems) 24 hours a day. That means the willingness to shoot down and engage Russian airplanes in the sky. That means, frankly, you can’t put those planes up there unless they’re willing to knock out the anti-aircraft systems that the Russians have deployed, and not just in Ukraine, but in Russia and also in Belarus.

So basically a no-fly zone … means World War III. It means starting World War III. It’s not some rule you pass that everybody has to oblige by. It’s the willingness to shoot down the aircrafts of the Russian Federation, which is basically the beginning of World War III.

While the threat to the independence and territorial integrity of Ukraine may be an existential one for that nation, it is no such peril to our nation.

Indeed, if one were to enumerate the greatest threats to the republic to which all of us pledge allegiance, the outcome of that war halfway around the world would not make the list.

What would be on the list?

The annual invasion of our country from across the southern border by millions of illegal aliens. The depreciation of the dollar through inflation, which is destroying the value of the earnings and savings of the American people.

The 100,000 Americans dying yearly from fentanyl and drug overdoses. The 1,500 daily deaths from COVID-19. The thousands of Americans shot, stabbed and beaten to death on the streets of once-great American cities every year.

During the Cold War between the Soviet Empire and the West, the great achievement of presidents from Harry Truman to George H.W. Bush was that they avoided the kind of war that consumed millions of lives of Western peoples from 1914 to 1918 and 1939 to 1945.

Consider what became of those nations and empires that entered the 20th century as great or aspiring great powers.

The Hapsburg, Hohenzollern, Romanov and Ottoman empires fell in World War I. The British and French empires did not long survive their “victory” in the Second World War that they declared on Sept. 3, 1939. The Soviet Union was bankrupted and broken by the cost of waging a four-decades-long Cold War.

Wars finished all the great powers of the 20th century, save the USA.

America’s desire today may be to inflict a defeat on Putin’s Russia.

U.S. vital national interests, however, dictate a negotiated peace.

Dem Nightmare: What If the War Ends Before November?

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Dem Nightmare: What If the War Ends Before November?

Great news for Joe Biden. After months of abysmal public approval numbers, President Biden’s favorability among registered voters has soared by 2 points to 45%! And all he had to do was bring us to the brink of World War III.

The media are thrilled with the possibility of nuclear war with Russia. Catastrophes are terrific for ratings, and flood-the-zone coverage of a war between two faraway countries that has almost zero effect on the lives of most Americans allows journalists to act like deep-think, geopolitical strategists (after having quickly looked up “Ukraine” on Wikipedia).

They dragged out the COVID panic porn for two straight years. By now, the only people still interested in pandemic updates are hysterical liberal women in Manhattan claiming to have “long-haul COVID.”

The national pastime has segued seamlessly from watching TV anchors cry on TV about the coronavirus to watching TV anchors cry on TV about the fate of Ukrainian children.

Of course, when American kids are murdered expressly as a result of our own government’s policies, the journalism protocol is: No crying, no coverage.

There will be no tears for the 5-year-old Florida girl killed in October when an illegal alien from Guatemala, Ernesto Lopez Morales, tanked up on six 32-ounce beers, then plowed into the little girl and her mother as he was driving to get more beer.

Nor for Texas teenager Adrienne Sophia Exum, killed instantly one Sunday afternoon in 2020 when Heriberto Fuerte-Padilla, an illegal alien from Mexico, smashed into the car she was driving, then fled the scene. There’s even some news: The Biden administration announced that Fuerte-Padilla will not be deported.

And there will be no weeping for the still-unidentified mother and daughter, aged 59 and 22, killed last December when a human smuggler (a “U.S. citizen,” aka “anchor baby”) carrying six illegals across the border into Texas, sped through a stop sign and T-boned the pair.

I’m sure it’s just a coincidence, but the media’s obsessive focus on Ukraine is terrific for the interests of the Democratic Party. Recall that, in his 2012 book, “Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind,” then-UCLA professor Tim Groseclose demonstrated that media bias alone costs Republicans about 8 to 10 percentage points in elections.

And that was 2012. One can only imagine what it is in post-Trump 2022. If only we could return to the junior varsity media bias of 2012!

Until the war in Ukraine, the Democrats were facing midterms after having spent the previous two years mandating masks and an endless series of vaccinations — even for the vaccinated or previously infected.

Democrats flung open the border to illegal alien murderers, drug dealers, gang members and welfare recipients.

Democratic district attorneys have turned city after city into feces-smeared murdertopias that make Charles Bronson’s “Death Wish” look like “The Sound of Music.”

These days, the left’s main casus belli is teaching little kids about anal sex, transgenders and the inherent evil of white people.

What could even Stalin’s media do with that record?

Option 1) Implement a collective mind wipe, perhaps through an electromagnetic pulse, to erase voters’ memory of everything that’s happened since Joe Biden was sworn in.

Option 2) WAR! (Someplace in the world that’s not here.)

What crisis at our border? We’re reporting on a WAR.

How can you talk about murder rates when CHILDREN ARE DYING IN UKRAINE?

What vaccine mandates? COVID is over. Now we’re talking about war!

Everything bad that’s happening is Putin’s fault! He’s like Hitler!

Talk about Russian collusion! Putin gave Trump Facebook ads; he’s giving Biden a military invasion.

By now, the media have whipped the public into such a frenzy over Ukraine that a majority of Americans want the U.S. to start shooting down Russian planes, starting World War III with nuclear armed power.

A small price to pay for Democratic dominance.

But much like American military interventions around the globe, things don’t always go as planned.The Democrats’ media helpers might want to recall President George H.W. Bush’s 89% favorable rating in 1991 — the highest presidential job approval rating then on record, according to Gallup.

Those astronomical numbers came as a result of the conclusion of the Persian Gulf War, when we went to war with Saddam Hussein because he had invaded neighboring Kuwait — violating that nation’s sacred sovereignty! — and proceeded to commit unspeakable war crimes, including using poison gas. The first week of that war, Bush’s poll numbers shot from 64% to 82%.

Republicans had a lock on the next year’s presidential contest. No serious Democrats were willing to challenge him, and the party ended up with a horny hick from Arkansas as their nominee.

And then it all collapsed. By Election Day 1992, Bush’s public approval rating was down to a pathetic 34%. The horny hick won the election, and Bush became an embarrassing one-term president.

On the military side, at least the Middle East was finally at peace. We never heard a peep out of Hussein again. Wait — what happened?

COPYRIGHT 2022 ANN COULTER

Is There a Peace Deal Putin and Zelensky Can Accept?

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If Russia and Ukraine reached a ceasefire and a truce, would the EU and NATO nations of Europe not swiftly stand down themselves, rather than keep the Ukrainian resistance fighting?… Where would that leave the West?

In an interview with Reuters, Dmitry Peskov, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman for decades, made a startling offer. Moscow could end the Ukraine war immediately, said Peskov, if four conditions were met.

Ukraine should cease all military action, recognize Crimea as part of Russia, accept the independence of the Luhansk and Donetsk separatist enclaves, and enact a constitutional commitment to “neutrality,” which would prevent Ukraine from ever joining NATO.

Were this to be done, said Peskov, the war “will stop in a moment.”

As this would restore the situation in Ukraine to the “status quo ante” that existed before Putin ordered the invasion, Peskov’s offer seemed not to be believable.

Yet, according to The New York Times, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky “seemed surprisingly open to the idea.”

Zelensky “said he had ‘cooled down’ on joining NATO, saying it was clear the western alliance ‘is not prepared to accept Ukraine.’”

As for Luhansk, Donetsk and Crimea, said Zelensky, “We can discuss and find a compromise on how these territories will live on.”

Monday, Ukraine and Russia held a fourth session of peace talks, and expressions of optimism were heard from both sides.

Ukrainian negotiator Mykhailo Podolyak volunteered that Russia is beginning to talk constructively. “I think that we will achieve some results literally in a matter of days.”

Yet, Russia’s strategic goals, manifest in its unfolding military action, seem to go far beyond the moderate demands of Peskov.

Three weeks into this war, what do Russia’s goals appear to be?

First, besiege and bring down the Kyiv government of Zelensky and replace it with a Russian client regime.

Second, divide Ukraine along the lines of the Dnieper River, which bisects the country north to south, and create an East Ukraine as a pro-Russian state.

Third, seize and occupy the entire coast of the Sea of Azov, turn it into a Russian lake, and capture all of the Ukrainian Black Sea coast from the Donbas to Mariupol, Crimea, Kherson, Odessa and Transnistria, the last a slice of seceded Moldovan land Moscow now controls.

This would leave a landlocked rump state of west Ukraine, which would be a buffer between NATO nations Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland — and Russia-backed East Ukraine.

The Wall Street Journal said Monday that Russia’s realization of these goals would be tantamount to victory in Putin’s war:

“A Ukraine divided in two, with Russia in control of the east, and a rump, Western Ukraine cut off from the coast might look like a victory to Mr. Putin — especially if sanctions are removed in some cease-fire agreement.”

With this kind of peace in hand, Putin could then warn the NATO nations that if they attacked East Ukraine directly, or indirectly by arming insurgents, they would face “consequences you have never seen.”

As no NATO nation risked war to save Georgia from Russia in 2008, or to save Ukraine from the Crimean and Donbas amputations of 2014, it is not likely NATO would risk war with Russia, and a potential third world war, if Russia declared a truce once it got full control of eastern Ukraine.

Where would that leave the West?

The Americans and British would likely treat Putin as a pariah and never meet with him again. But would President Emmanuel Macron of France and Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany cut off all communication with Russia, when they have been making daily phone calls to Putin and regular visits to Moscow, even as Putin’s war of aggression was raging?

If Russia and Ukraine reached a ceasefire and a truce, would the EU and NATO nations of Europe not swiftly stand down themselves, rather than keep the Ukrainian resistance fighting?

If Kyiv falls to a Russian strategy of encirclement and strangulation, capitulation and conquest, how long would it be before EU nations seek an end to Russia’s isolation and a new era of detente?

Or would the continued existence of a regime headed by Putin mean permanent hostility?

Three years after Nikita Khrushchev sent Soviet tanks into Budapest to crush the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, the Soviet premier was riding up Pennsylvania Avenue in an open convertible with Dwight Eisenhower to spend the night at Blair House before a 12-day tour as the guest of the president of the United States.

As of now, the winner of this Russia-Ukraine war appears to be China.

Given the severity of U.S. sanctions and the ostracism of Russia from the West, China is the only partner nation and economy to which Moscow can turn to recoup its losses.

If this war continues to unfold in a manner that is slow, painful and ugly, China and Russia are likely to establish far better relations with each other than either has with the United States.

But how is China, which is engaged in cultural genocide against its Uyghur minority of 10 million, a racial and ethnic persecution featuring reeducation camps, rapes, forced abortions and sterilizations, a morally superior regime to Putin’s?

How Solid Are US War Guarantees?

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In World War II, we Americans did not go to war with Germany for Great Britain, when it declared war on Hitler’s Germany and then was defeated in France. We went to war with Germany only when Hitler declared war on us, four days after Pearl Harbor in December 1941.

When several NATO nations revealed that they had dozens of Russian-made MiG-29s, the idea arose to fly them to Ukraine and turn them over to Ukrainian pilots familiar with the MiGs.

America would provide F-16s to replace the MiGs.

Poland had an even better idea. Warsaw would fly its 27 MiG fighter jets to the U.S. Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany. The planes would be turned over to the Americans there, repainted and flown to Ukraine.

How to get the MiGs to Ukraine’s pilots would be left to the Americans.

Now, as Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that a NATO “no-fly zone” over Ukraine would be an act of war, and NATO intervention could escalate to nuclear war, Warsaw’s proposal raised instant American alarms.

The Poles seemed, in the old cliche, to be putting the monkey on our back, having the Americans take the primary risk of defying a specific warning of Putin.

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby splashed cold water all over the Poles’ idea:

The prospect of fighter jets ‘at the disposal of the Government of the United States of America’ departing from a U.S./NATO base in Germany to fly into airspace that is contested with Russia over Ukraine raises serious concerns for the entire NATO alliance.

According to The Washington Post, CIA Director William Burns was at the same time warning the House intelligence committee that Putin’s nuclear saber-rattling is of concern, because of Moscow’s military doctrine of “escalate to de-escalate” during a regional conflict.

Russia, said Burns, will use tactical nuclear strikes “in extremis” if its forces fail to pacify Ukraine and the U.S. and NATO join the war.

Yet, the Poles’ MiG plan, now dead, is revealing for what it says about us.

First, while we support Kyiv in its just war, there are limits to that support. We are not going to risk war with Russia for the independence or territorial integrity, or even the continued existence, of Ukraine.

Second, as we are unwilling to send MiGs to Ukraine to stop the Russian bombing, lest that involve us in a war with Russia, what is there of sufficient value to us in Eastern Europe that we would actually declare war on Russia, a war that could horribly damage or destroy us both?

When the Russians hit a maternity hospital in Mariupol, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky castigated the U.S. and NATO: “How much longer will the world be an accomplice ignoring terror? Close the sky right now!”

“Stop the killings!” Zelensky thundered: “You have power, but you seem to be losing humanity.”

Zelensky’s message to the U.S. and NATO, almost daily now, is: “Don’t be cowards. Man up. Do your duty. Close the skies over Ukraine, or send us the planes to do it ourselves.”

The U.S.-NATO reply: “We’re with you up to a point. But we are not risking our own security and survival, in what is not our war, for yours.”

Putin’s ambition, his goal, his dream, appear transparent — to bring home to the bosom of Mother Russia the diaspora Russians left behind in the lost 14 republics when the USSR splintered and came apart.

Those housing significant Russian minorities are Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan and the Baltic republics of Latvia and Estonia.

Query: Would we really go to war with Russia if Russia invaded our NATO ally Estonia to bring home Russian peoples left behind at the end of the Cold War?

If Russia seeks to create a land corridor through Lithuania and Poland to its separated province of Kaliningrad on the Baltic, would we declare war on a nuclear-armed Russia to prevent it?

The Biden administration, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken in the lead, has said again and again these last two weeks that the U.S. will defend “every inch” of NATO territory.

Will we? What are we really willing to die for, and what should we be willing to fight for? For that means putting at risk the lives of millions of our people and the ruin of our country.

In World War II, we Americans did not go to war with Germany for Great Britain, when it declared war on Hitler’s Germany and then was defeated in France. We went to war with Germany only when Hitler declared war on us, four days after Pearl Harbor in December 1941.

America’s media are full of reports of the new “unity” in NATO.

But one of the matters about which the Allies seem to be most united is that the Russia-Ukraine war is not ours to fight and we should prevent its spread to any of the 30 NATO nations.

On national media, one also hears enthusiasm for bringing Finland and Sweden into NATO.

But Finland is the size of Germany and has an 833-mile border with Russia, which would be NATO’s largest. Is it really credible that the U.S. would declare war or go to war with Russia to secure Finland’s border?

Do These Black Lives Matter to L.A.’s Idiot D.A.

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Do These Black Lives Matter to L.A.’s Idiot D.A.?

Hey, whatever happened to that story about Sandra Shells? She was the 70-year-old nurse killed by one of Los Angeles’ many “unhoused” individuals (drug-addicted psychopaths) while she waited for a bus at 5:15 in the morning in January, on her way to her job at the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center.

A homeless guy, Kerry Bell, walked up to Shells and punched her in the face, knocking her to the ground and fracturing her skull. She died of her injuries three days later.

Her life mattered more even than, say, George Floyd’s — and I can prove it.

1) Shells was a hardworking nurse, remembered as “kind, compassionate and giving” and a favorite of patients.

2) There is no evidence that she’d ever committed a home invasion robbery on a woman in Texas, pistol-whipped the woman and put a gun to her abdomen.

3) She was not a meth addict.

4) She did not have a long rap sheet, including selling cocaine, selling crack and theft.

5) She was merely standing at a bus stop — not, for example, resisting arrest after passing a counterfeit bill and having the police called on her.

But no one even knows her name, much less runs around erecting sacramental altars to her. To the contrary, news about this vicious assault on a kindly nurse was purged from all media outlets approximately 10 minutes after it happened. The police haven’t even released her assailant’s mug shot. Only after extensive searching online can you find the arrest report for Bell. “Race: B.”

It doesn’t matter to me, but it does to some of you, so I’ll mention that the victim’s race was also “B.”

If you can’t remember Shells’ name, then please remember this name: George Gascon, the district attorney entirely responsible for the explosion of murders, stabbings and smash-and-grab robberies in Los Angeles. So many, in fact, that the sickening murder of an elderly nurse isn’t considered especially newsworthy.

There’s an effort underway to recall Gascon — a George Soros-sponsored D.A. Coincidentally, there’s also an effort to recall San Francisco’s Chesa Boudin, another George Soros-sponsored D.A. “George Soros-sponsored D.A.” is shorthand for “This man will empty the prisons of berserk savages to prey on you and your loved ones.”

Which happens to be the official policy of the Democratic Party. Pay no attention to the windbaggery of President Biden’s recent Oh My God, Midterms Are Coming speech — I mean, State of the Union address — where he said, “The answer is not to defund the police. The answer is to fund the police!” Has he met his vice president? Kamala Harris endorsed Gascon.

Gascon’s response to the bloodbath he’s unleashed on the City of Angels is to announce: “In many ways, we cannot prosecute our way out of social inequalities, income inequalities, the unhoused, the desperation that we have.”

What does the “in many ways” do in that sentence? I know English isn’t Gascon’s first language, but I can’t make heads or tails of the “in many ways.”

Nor, come to think of it, the rest of the sentence. Is it a prosecutor’s job to reduce “social” and “income” inequalities? How about inequalities in work ethic, mathematical skills, good looks, athletic ability, comedic talent and empathetic understanding?

While it’s nice that the Los Angeles D.A. has made the amazing discovery that people are different, if he thinks it’s his duty to make all people the same, he may have misunderstood the job description of a D.A.

As for Gascon’s apparent goal of eliminating “the desperation that we have,” the main cause of “desperation” among Los Angelinos right now is George Gascon. If he really wants to do something about “the desperation,” he should resign.

Gascon is either very, very stupid or thinks the public is stupid, and his incomprehensible verbiage will persuade them that the last thing he should be doing is prosecuting criminals.

How’s this for desperation? The fabulously wealthy Clarence and Jacqueline Avant, a legendary music producer and his ex-model wife, felt they had to hire a private security guard for their $7 million Beverly Hills home. Late last year, they’d also voted with their neighbors to hire guards to patrol their pricey Trousdale Estates neighborhood.

Days before the neighborhood patrol began, Aariel Maynor, a felon on parole despite a long list of priors (assault, robbery and grand theft) snuck past the Avants’ private guard at the front door, smashed a sliding glass door in the back, and burst in on the very much awake Mrs. Avant, a night owl, as her husband slept in their bedroom.

Maynor promptly blew her away with an AR-15 rifle. Hearing the gunfire, the private guard rushed in and Maynor shot at him, too, missing. He fled, but was captured about an hour later, after accidentally shooting himself in the foot while burglarizing a house seven miles away.

Mrs. Avant’s life mattered — even more than some other celebrated lives you may have heard of.

My proof:

1) She was the “pillar of that family,” as a friend put it.

2) She was a generous donor to local causes, such as the Neighbors of Watts and the South Central Community Child Care Center.

3) She was not a meth addict or violent ex-con who’d put a gun to a woman’s stomach, or passed a counterfeit bill in Minneapolis, then resisted arrest.

4) For my liberal readers: Mrs. Avant was an African-American.

But far from a national rending of garments, as we saw in tribute to Saint George, the response to Mrs. Avant’s murder was this: The D.A. promptly sent out a fundraising letter, making a heartfelt plea on behalf of armed criminals like the sociopath who killed her.

Gascon’s letter urged the passage of a law that would end sentence enhancements for crimes committed with a firearm. Such “sentence enhancements,” Gascon claimed, “have never been shown to reduce the rate of crime, and excessive sentence enhancements can actually drive up re-offense.”

Really? Can I see the study? Pro-crime zealots just make this crap up. Studies show that imprisoning criminals actually INCREASES crime.

It’s bad enough to have dangerous psychos out on the street, threatening our lives because there’s something wrong with their brains. The least we can expect is that they aren’t D.A.s.

COPYRIGHT 2022 ANN COULTER
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Is a Russia-NATO Clash Over Ukraine Ahead?

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Ukraine’s independence is not vital to the United States. While a desirable goal, it is not worth our fighting a war with Russia to preserve…. Indeed, had we given Putin assurances that NATO was closed to Kyiv, we might have prevented what has happened, because that was the first and most insistent of Putin’s demands.

When Hungarian rebels arose in 1956 to overthrow the Communist regime imposed by Joseph Stalin, President Dwight Eisenhower refused to send U.S. forces to aid the Hungarians.

Ike would not take America to war with Russia over a small country in Central Europe.

While the Hungarians were heroic and inspirational, Hungary was neither a member of NATO nor a vital U.S. interest. Moreover, it was on the Soviet side of the Yalta line dividing Europe, and agreed to by Franklin D. Roosevelt, Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill at Yalta in 1945.

For similar reasons today, President Joe Biden has refused to send U.S. troops, ships or planes to attack Russian forces invading Ukraine.

Though a nation of 44 million and almost as large as Texas, Ukraine is neither a vital U.S. interest nor a member of NATO.

However, were Russian President Vladimir Putin to invade Estonia, whose population is 3% of Ukraine’s, America would be obligated to go to war with Russia.

Does this disparity make strategic sense?

Should not America have the same freedom of action to decide whether to fight for Estonia as we do to decide whether to fight for Ukraine? After all, Ukraine is far larger and more populous and strategic.

In 1948, President Harry Truman refused to use force to break Stalin’s Berlin Blockade. In 1956, Eisenhower refused to intervene to save Hungary. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy refused to use force to stop the building of the Berlin Wall.

In 1968, President Lyndon Johnson refused to intervene when the USSR invaded Czechoslovakia to crush the pro-democracy “Prague Spring.”

Yet, today, America’s leaders do not have the same freedom not to act as did Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson. We are obligated to act. Why?

Because, since the end of the Cold War, we have expanded the membership of NATO, and there are now 28 nations of Europe we are obligated to defend if they are attacked.

Ukraine is not one of them, but five of them that border Russia or Ukraine — Romania, Slovakia, Poland, Latvia and Estonia — are currently providing Stinger or Javelin missiles to Ukraine to destroy Russian tanks, down Russian aircraft, and kill Russian soldiers in Ukraine.

If Putin retaliated against any of these countries for these arms transfers that are killing Russian soldiers, the U.S. would be obligated, under Article 5 of NATO, to fight Russia on behalf of these NATO nations.

Article 5 automatically conscripts the United States into a war with Russia, if Moscow retaliates against a NATO nation providing weapons to kill Russian soldiers.

Why have we willingly tied our own hands in this manner?

During 40 years of Cold War, America remained secure while East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were all under Moscow’s control.

These nations are all free today as a result of the West’s victory in the Cold War. But why do all these nations have war guarantees from the United States when none of them, as the Cold War demonstrated, is a vital interest of the USA?

Why, after the Cold War ended in 1991, did we agree to fight a war with Russia, including a nuclear war, on their behalf when 40 years of Cold War demonstrated they were not essential to our security?

Today, by our refusal to intervene militarily in Ukraine, to slow or halt this Russian invasion, we are sending a message to the world.

That message?

Ukraine’s independence is not vital to the United States. While a desirable goal, it is not worth our fighting a war with Russia to preserve.

Moreover, the independence of Ukraine is not worth the risk of using U.S. planes to establish a no-fly zone for Russian planes in the skies over Ukraine.

Indeed, had we given Putin assurances that NATO was closed to Kyiv, we might have prevented what has happened, because that was the first and most insistent of Putin’s demands.

The heroic rhetoric we are hearing from our political and media leaders aside, the real message sent to Ukraine by our own and NATO’s actions and inaction is this:

We will send you weapons, but we are not sending our troops, and we are not going to fight your war for you, or beside you, unless and until we decide that it is in our vital interest to do so.

Fortunately, we had not brought Ukraine into NATO, nor given Kyiv a war guarantee that obligated us to risk everything for a nation deemed not vital to us.

Those who prevented the U.S. from realizing former President George W. Bush’s ambition to bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO may have saved us from a war with Russia in which both of us could have suffered horribly.

Whether we go to war for a nation that was formerly part of the Soviet bloc should be a matter for decision by the Americans of that day and time — not mandated, not dictated by our signature on a 73-year-old treaty, devised for another era and another world.