CIA officers and FBI agents making suddenly appealing offers

I finished the book How We Do Family by Trystan Reece. It is an autobiography of a transgender man who fell in love with Biff, a gay man. About the time they decided they could make a long term go of the relationship Biff got a call saying Child Protective Services were about to remove his sister’s children from her home and it would be easier if Biff and Trystan took them, at least for a while. On the way to pick up the kids Biff told Trystan this is an eighteen year commitment. Even if we fall out of love you need to commit to the kids for the full term. Trystan said he’s in. Biff said he doubted Trystan knew what he was in for. So they picked up Lucas, who was three, and Hailey, who was just a few months old. Both showed signs of abuse and neglect. It took a while to settle into being a family. After a couple years Trystan proposed to Biff. This was before same-sex marriage was legal. Then it was time to plan a wedding. Trystan doesn’t remember a lot of details of the ceremony though he does remember the words his mother wrote to the Leonard Cohen song Hallelujah that recounted his life to that point. A few years after that they converted the guardianship of Lucas and Hailey into adoption. There was the fear the judge would be homophobic. About that time Trystan realized he wanted a baby. He still had the equipment to gestate one. And he found it is possible for a baby to grow too big for the parent’s body to handle. Along the way he recounts all these things from the trans man’s perspective – trying to share his story as a part of normalizing trans people yet having to deal with a great deal of transphobia and homophobia. Trystan’s day job is to run workshops to teach people to be anti-racist and an ally to oppressed groups. So at the end of each chapter he shares ways to do what the chapter was about. And his epilogue is on how to raise anti-racist children. I highly recommend this book. Marissa Higgins of Daily Kos wrote about something that has come up alongside the Don’t Say Gay bill in Florida. Christina Pushaw, press secretary for Gov. DeathSantis, implied the bill was really “anti-grooming” and a person who opposes the bill is “probably a groomer.” Those of us in Michigan know about grooming from the Larry Nassar molestation scandal. He groomed girls on gymnastics teams and then molested them. I think the total count of victims is over 300. There is also the University of Michigan and a Dr. Anderson, who died maybe 20 years ago, but during his time as a sports doctor he molested male students, maybe a thousand of them. Some are finally speaking out. Higgins described grooming. It is giving the victim special attention to be a positive presence in a person’s life. When trust is established the groomer then violates it with abuse. The relationship feels healthy at the start and the abuse makes the victim quite confused. So to label all LGBTQ+ people as groomers is quite offensive. Sadly, this is an old game by conservatives. They used to claim that we “recruited” children to be gay or trans. Now they use “grooming” to mean the same thing. Of course, baked into that charge is their false claim that orientation and identity are chosen. Any gay or trans person will tell you no one recruited them. Many knew before anyone had a chance to recruit them. I grew up in the 1960s and into the 70s. I knew no one who was LGBT. Any gay people in my life were all firmly closeted. I concluded later than a couple high school friends and maybe a teacher were gay. But I didn’t know it then and they certainly didn’t try to recruit me. Grooming is just the recruiting claim under a new name. Except this name is worse because it implies abuse. I downloaded Michigan’s COVID data, updated yesterday. Last week’s peak in new cases per day has been adjusted downward by more than 100 to 876. This week’s peak was 839. The decline is still good, though it has slowed. The deaths per day for the first week of March has been in the 17-27 range. That’s also moving in a good direction. A few days ago Ed Young of The Atlantic tweeted:

Around 63,000 Americans died of COVID last month. On average, each death leaves 9 close relatives bereaved. That's at least half a million people whose extremely recent grief is being trampled under the stampede of back-to-normal policies & punditry.

He included a link to his article in The Atlantic that has this description:

How Did This Many Deaths Become Normal? The U.S. is nearing 1 million recorded COVID-19 deaths without the social reckoning that such a tragedy should provoke. Why?

The latest updates in the invasion of Ukraine: In an update from early afternoon yesterday Mark Sumner of Kos noted that (of course) the fighting in Ukraine is in the eastern half. That may change if Belorusian soldiers enter the fight. But the west has more hills, more heavily wooded, and sparsely populated. And Ukrainian soldiers are being trained in Lviv in the west so soldiers won’t have to be shifted from the east. Yeah, they’re inexperienced – but so are the soliders from Belarus. Commenter Ice Blue quoted tweets from Peter Strzok and Nigel Gould-Davies. Both quoted Andrei Soldatov who noted Putin had arrested the FSB foreign service head and deputy. Gould-Davies wrote:

This is stunning news. Putin arresting --not just firing or reprimanding-- senior FSB figures. Stresses and strains of war on the power vertical.

and Strozok wrote:

And across the Russian intelligence agencies, CIA officers and FBI agents making suddenly appealing offers of additional employment opportunities...

In another comment Ice Blue quoted a tweet by Franak Viačorka that says only 3% of Belorusians support their country’s participation in the war. The Biden White House held a Zoom meeting with 30 TikTok influencers to discuss US goals in Ukraine and Europe also to also help those on social media identify what news out of the war is real and what is fake. An example of fake is a video claimed to be of Ukraine but is actually of Palestine – or a video game. Yesterday I wrote that a couple Russian state propagandists had spoke a bit against the wary. Aldous Pennyfarthing of Kos has more on the incident. In an update from late afternoon yesterday Kos of Kos looked at calls to do more to help Ukraine. These calls frequently come with a photo that would cause us to cringe, such as a young woman holding a gun who is the same age as the writer’s daughter. Kos quoted Mike Mazarr, who provided details of what Kos describes as world powers acting on impulse and urgency and getting sucked into a bigger disaster. See both the US and Russia in Afghanistan. Kos wrote:

The argument for doing more is predicated on the civilian carnage we’re seeing in Ukraine. Putin must be stopped, it is argued, to save civilian deaths. However, a wider war doesn’t mean fewer civilian deaths, it means more. If Russia’s modus operandi is to bombard its foes into submission, what makes anyone think that Russian bombs and missiles would stop falling on population centers? What’s more likely is that they’ll start falling on more population centers. Suddenly, capital cities like Warsaw, Vilnius, Riga, Tallin, Bucharest, and Sofia would be in range of Russia-based missile systems, and many more in range via Russian naval and strategic air assets in the Mediterranean, North, and Baltic seas. ... Are we willing to put tens of millions of new civilians at risk, to feel better about the millions currently at risk?

If saving civilians was a goal we should have not armed Ukraine and let Russia sweep in and install its puppet government. But the goal is freedom, democracy, and self determination. Ukrainians knew the stakes and decided to fight. Our job is to support them. In a late evening post Kos considers which Ukrainian city should get an MVP award. The nominees: Sumy: It is close to the border with Russia and there is a 200 mile road to Kyiv. Russia has control of that road, but not really. Sumy, by holding out, prevents that road from being resupplied. Ukrainian civilians with basic military training are able to routinely maul the Russians along that road. Russia has had to pull troops off the siege of Kyiv to protect this line. Kharkiv: It is also close to the Russian border. There is also a good road from Kharkiv to Kyiv. But Russian troops have not been able to take the town or get past it. The road to Kyiv remains clear. Mariupol: It is on the coast between Donbas and Crimea. Russia controls the region around it. In spite of heavy bombardment and starving citizens and reports that it has fallen several times it is still in Ukrainian hands. Mykolaiv: It is blocking the way of Russian troops to get to Odessa. At the moment it hasn’t faced the sustained assault of the other cities, but it is becoming just as important.

And really, the MVP is the collective Ukrainian people, from its army, to its territorial defense force, to its leadership, keeping people motivated, to all the civilians that are not just surviving unimaginable conditions, but are aiding in the war effort by building fortifications, feeding defenders, helping repair equipment, cleaning up after bombardments, manning hospitals and clinics, and keeping supply lines running.

Kos quoted a tweet from Visegrád24 noting Putin said that the USSR lived under sanctions and succeeded. The tweet went on to say:

Per capita consumption in the USSR never exceeded 1/3 that of the US. 20% of the USSR’s population lived on less than 75 rubles per person a month. 4 - 5 million Soviet families lived below the poverty level.

It is strange that Putin is taking about the glories of the USSR and not the glories of Russia. I add something I thought about when I first heard of Putin’s claim. The USSR didn’t succeed. It fell apart in 1989.