Help Ukraine beat Russia

Biden and Zelensky

David French in today's NY Times:

....if Russia ultimately defeats Ukraine, Vladimir Putin will have a message for his people: Russia confronted Ukraine and NATO, and Russia won. Russian victory will have a galvanizing impact on illiberal and authoritarian movements in the West.

Western retreat from a winnable war will prove in many quarters the Russian critique of the “woke” West, that it is simply too self-indulgent, decadent and individualistic to survive and thrive.

Make no mistake, this is a winnable war. Yes, Ukraine alone cannot withstand Russia over the long term. It lacks the personnel and the industrial base. 

But American industrial output dwarfs Russia's, and our superior arms can help address the personnel gap. Better weapons can overcome the challenge of fewer people. 

America, the arsenal of democracy, has the capacity to help Ukraine win even a long fight. 

The question is whether we have the will....

Cowardly attacks on Bay Area cyclists

Deliberately hit by motorist

In the LA Times:

On the evening of Feb. 10, Eleanor Mead was riding her bike in Oakland on the way to the East Bay Bike Party, a meet-up of dozens of bicyclists who then pedal through the San Francisco Bay Area streets.

“Ironically, one of my favorite parts of Bike Party is when I’m on my way there because you slowly start to see more and more cyclists,” Mead said in an interview with The Times.

“There’s a little magic in the air.”

As she was traveling, however, the spell was broken as Mead noticed that a car had been driving close on her left-hand side despite there being “plenty of space” for the gray sedan to pass her.

“Then it happened really, really fast,” she said.

The front passenger door of the sedan was opened into her path, just a few feet ahead.

“The next thing I knew, I was on the ground, falling off my bike,” she said. “The car sped away, and as it did, I heard them laughing”....

In the following days, Mead and other cycling aficionados learned that she was not the only East Bay bicyclist who was “doored,” or hit, in incidents involving what may have been the same vehicle.

The attacks have made the neighborhood’s biking community uneasy as efforts to involve law enforcement have been frustrating.

“It’s a lot bigger than I think any of us kind of imagined,” Mead said, “and it’s just really weird.”

After her attack, a friend of Mead’s reached out to the East Bay Bike Party and asked if it would share information about the incident on its social media pages to potentially track down witnesses.

“We posted that one story and almost immediately there was a flood of messages,” said Charlotte Hyrse, a Bike Party volunteer.

Multiple people reached out to say they had been targeted by what they believed was the same or a similar vehicle before and after the Feb. 10 event....