I support the Administration’s measured, progressive approach to Russian economic sanctions and non boots-on-the-ground support, but believe it is now time, if there ever was a time, to cut the bloody ties to Russian oil and fossil fuels from which it derives its chief support for the extermination and subjectification of free peoples. The United States receives a relatively insignificant amount of its oil from Russia. Its negligible absence will not be responsible for higher fuel costs – world oil markets are. The administration can help with increasing fuel costs with subsidies and reduction of oil taxes. Likewise, California, currently enjoying a budget surplus, can reduce or eliminate its high gas taxes, at least until prices recede again. We should encourage and assist the European Union to do so as well. After all, Vladimir Putin’s expansionism is, or at least soon will be, their immediate fight. Again and again, consumers face the wild non-renewable energy fluctuations imposed upon us by rampant global market forces out of our control. The answer is, as it has been for many decades now, to insulate ourselves form these persistent forces and accelerate the transition to renewable independence – to take control once and for all. Americans are, by nature and history, an independent lot, our differences reconcilable by lawful charter. 
But where is our Representative, the feckless, subservient, “Baby Carrots” McCarthy? Hiding beneath the skirts of oil lobbyists and an avowed Putin disciple. If all out war is to be avoided, capitulation to Putin’s threats cannot be countenanced. No good has ever come from repeatedly backing down from a bully. It is unAmerican.
The parallels between Ukraine’s courageous and desperate struggle for democracy and self determination against a ruthless oppressor and the nascent United States of two and half centuries ago could not be more clear. France being then to America, supporting our war of independence, as America is to Ukraine today, maybe, just maybe, if history repeats as is its want, and peace resumes, we will send Ukraine a statue of friendship and brotherhood, a gift of liberty. Or, maybe we will send them ours, if we are done with it. We are Ukraine. Ukraine is us.
