Worrying about Russia’s reaction seems quite quaint these days

I downloaded Michigan’s COVID data, updated yesterday. The weekly peak in new cases per day is up again. For the last four weeks the peak has been 840, 981, 1239, and 1609. That first number is the last in four weeks of very little movement. I also see the huge early January peak has been revised from somewhere above 27,000 to 23,700. In the last ten days the deaths per day has been 5 and fewer (though about half of that is still preliminary). In a report from a couple weeks ago Adrian Florido of NPR spoke to Allison Skinner-Dorkenoo, a University of Georgia psycologist who studied COVID and racial disparities. She said:

What we found was that the more people perceived there to be racial disparities, the less fearful they were of COVID-19, and the less they supported safety precautions to prevent the spread.

Then Florido talked to LaFleur Stephens-Dougan on how to humanize public health campaigns without causing this backlash. Because the country is so racist that is difficult to do. Kos of Daily Kos reported the heavy weapons spigot is open in Ukraine. The promised armaments are now arriving. For the military nerds out there Kos lists and describes the stuff that’s now showing up and is ready for battle. As part of his conclusion Kos wrote:

While Ukraine hasn’t gotten everything it wants, the spigot is now open, with heavy armor (tanks and armored personnel carriers), aircraft, artillery, MLRS, and air defense systems finally flowing into the country. No one aside from the Germans and the French seem particularly worried about Russia’s reaction, and worrying about it seems quite quaint these days. Russia has watched impotently as NATO has flooded Ukraine with the very weapons that have killed or injured tens of thousands of Z invaders.

Hunter of Kos reported that because there are so many smartphones out there this war is more closely documented than any previous war. We have a great deal of information. But we still don’t have a clue about Russia’s “strategy.” If there is one. That means even the Pentagon has a hard time figuring out if the “major Russian offensive” has already started. The bombardments have increased. So is it “softening the enemy” before the big offensive, or is this all they got? What this war has shown is NATO leaders no longer believe Russia has the military of a superpower. In another update Kos reported that Russia has inched forward. In some of these places Ukraine has done a tactical withdrawal. Germany is towards the bottom of the list of donors of equipment to Ukraine. Germany is still importing and paying for a great deal of Russian oil and gas. Which prompted Timothy Snyder, professor of history at Yale, to tweet:

For thirty years, Germans lectured Ukrainians about fascism. When fascism actually arrived, Germans funded it, and Ukrainians died fighting it.

Yesterday I wrote about the speech Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow gave in response to a bigoted colleague. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported on some of the positive response to that message (I’m sure there was negative response, but I don’t visit those websites and Einenkel didn’t either). A few of the responses were wishing other Democrats had that much spine. Another, from Carol, said “Every Republican accusation is a confession.” There is also this tweet from Siggy Rose:

In Germany, teaching the Holocaust is mandatory. It includes visits to concentration camp, museums, etc. They don’t shy away from their own ugly history. Yet the kids aren’t damaged; they’re strengthened, matured, humbled. US needs to do same re slavery. Not that complicated.

April Siese of Kos wrote:

There is yet more evidence showing that major U.S. utilities are doing their damnedest to resist climate change mitigation. A recent report from nonpartisan climate crisis think tank InfluenceMap reveals that a majority of utility companies are not positively engaging with climate policy. Instead of using their considerable influence to help hasten a greener future and move closer to net-zero goals, many energy companies have at least mixed records, if not outright hostility toward that transition. InfluenceMap’s findings range from an analysis of social media posts and state hearing testimonies to lobbying and legal action. Just four out of 25 companies analyzed consistently offered positive engagement ...

Two of the four are in California, none in Michigan. Meteor Blades of Kos reported that Biden campaigned on no more oil and gas leasing on federal land. Last week he broke that promise. Much of the rest of his post is various environment and climate activists saying how much of a bad idea this is. Part of that is the more oil and gas we leave in the ground the better for the environment. Another part is the huge amount of land oil companies have already leased and are not drilling on, so why lease more? A third part is the industry saying this will lower high gas prices, but none of the oil from these leases will be on the market before 2025, if at all. The critiques by the activists bring up several more points. The bits of good news, though they don’t outweigh the bad news, is the amount of land up for lease is 80% less than was being evaluated for possible leasing and the price of the leases has gone up 50%. Joan McCarter of Kos, in a post from ten days ago, discussed the trend in recent abortion bans. The authors and supporters of these laws are no longer “pro life.” We used to say abortion bans should exempt pregnancies that result from rape and incest. That implies that maybe some abortions are not justified and a ban for those is appropriate. We should have been saying all along that in all cases the decision to terminate a pregnancy is up to the woman. McCarter got into that discussion because many of the new laws Republicans are passing to go into effect when Roe v. Wade falls do not include an exception for rape and incest. Which is government sanctioned secondary harm to rape victims. Even when those exceptions remain in the law there are still problems. An incest survivor, usually a child, doesn’t have easy access to police or doctors. A rape victim has plenty of reasons to not report the assault. Also going away are the exceptions for “the life of the mother.” Forced birther groups are no longer pretending that the mother is as or more important than the fetus. Yes, they’re saying the potential for a human is of more value than a fully realized living woman.