I’d dearly love to have my country back, too

My Sunday movie was Young Royals, episodes 5 & 6, which is the end of season 2. This is the story of Wilhelm, Prince of Sweden, falling in love with commoner Simon. The mind games continue with cross and double cross. Some friendships are broken and others restored. And it comes to a mostly satisfactory conclusion. It ends with Wilhelm giving a speech before the students, the queen, and the press – and lots of students with their phones out. He goes off the palace assigned script and says he is tired of coverups and admits to having sex with Simon. But the episode ends before Wilhelm says anything about love or implications a gay prince has for the monarchy. So maybe there is room for a season 3? If there is I’ll probably watch. Quite a while ago I heard one of the rules of drama. If a gun is shown it will be used before the end of the story. That implies a gun is such a potent force in our culture, perhaps in all world cultures, that it cannot be shown in a story without it playing an important part of the story. I thought of that 3-4 episodes back when Wilhelm has a lesson in skeet shooting. And, yes, the gun was back in this episode. While visiting Niece at Thanksgiving I talked about watching this show and the strangeness of the English I hear not matching the lips moving to Swedish words. Niece said I can switch from dubbing to subtitles. So I tried it. And soon switched back to dubbing. I think after hearing them speak English for the previous eight hours of the story the Swedish was too jarring. In the process I heard the actors who spoke the original Swedish were the same ones that spoke the English dubbing. A few weeks ago I wrote about the book How Not to Die by Michael Greger. Its major point is that a meat based diet (the SAD – Standard American Diet) is bad for our health. The author reviews the top 15 causes of death and how eating a plant-based diet will stop the development and even reverse all 15 of those diseases. Along the way he goes through a great deal of science. My doctor had suggested a second book, which I’ve read. It is Fiber Fueled by Dr. Will Bulsiewicz. He looks at human health through the lens of the microscopic biome in our gut. The author reviews the science and has links to the studies on his website. I’ll discuss the major points and let you look at the details. It is this gut biome that does a great deal of digestion for us. The biome is made up thousands of different kinds of microbes. Some benefit us, others don’t. When we eat plants the good microbes thrive and benefit us. When we eat animal products the good microbes struggle and bad microbes thrive and that is hard on us. Because we are not eating to benefit our biome, which benefits us, we are overfed, undernourished, and overmedicated. We try to solve health problems with pills (and our doctors are great at pushing pills) that are better solved through diet. He warns against taking antibiotics. They can significantly damage the gut biome. Yes, there are times when an antibiotic is necessary. But most of the time it isn’t. When it isn’t we shouldn’t insist the doctor give us one. And when we do take one we should do what we can to help our biome to recover. This morning there was a story by Allison Aubrey on NPR about doctors who are prescribing properly tailored meals instead of medication to relieve diet induced maladies. So maybe some doctors are catching on. Back to the book. Bulsiewicz’s basic guiding phrase for what to eat is a diversity of plants. Each plant has its own combination of nutrients and type of fiber. Each plant encourages a different suite of good microbes and the greater variety of good microbes we have the better our health. So he says we should aim for food from at least thirty different plants in a week. Include seaweed and spices, both of which have their own nutrients. Don’t stick to the same dozen foods. I made a list of plants I like and I tolerate well and came up with 33 (and one of them is chocolate – hey, unless it’s milk chocolate it’s a plant with good nutrients). Alas, modern American food production usually sells packages that I struggle to finish before they spoil, so using a lot of one thing crowds out others. I used to be able to buy a single kiwi. Now I have to buy a package of six. So I don’t. Another aspect of diversity is the color of the food. This is something mentioned in other sources. Eat the rainbow and the more intense the color the better it is. A plant based diet is naturally low in calories, so if one sticks to it one’s weight will drop to a more healthy level. Another category of foods this doctor promotes that I haven’t seen in other diets is fermented foods. It is foods like saurkraut, kimchee, and sourdough bread. They also promote the good microbes. I have a hard time finding a high fiber sourdough. Avoid processed foods because a lot of the good nutrients and a great deal of the fiber is lost. Those meat substitutes that are all the rage now are processed foods. Oils are too. He discussed gluten. Unless one is sensitive specifically to gluten – and celiac disease can be nasty – one should eat foods with gluten. There is a mistaken idea out there that gluten is something to avoid. For most people that isn’t true. Foods with gluten, and gluten itself, broaden the diversity of nutrients in a diet. Bulsiewicz discusses supplements. Yes, they can help establish a healthy biome. But supplements cannot compensate for a bad diet. As the previous book had said, one doesn’t have to switch to an all plant diet all at once. Don’t worry about if sticking to it is hard. Every step towards a plant diet is good. The last 150 pages of the book is a four week plan to get one into a fiber fueled diet. There are recipes and shopping lists for each week. He offers guidance in dealing with certain food sensitivities. And each recipe is scored for the diversity of plants in it. Alas, I read through the recipes and many didn’t sound tasty. Many more involve ingredients I’m unfamiliar with and hesitant to buy in case I don’t like them. Out of that long list of recipes I see maybe a couple that look interesting. So for now I’ll muddle through in trying to at least eat a variety of plants. Greg Dworkin, in a pundit roundup for Daily Kos, quoted Julia of Belluz writing for the New York Times. She discussed the outcome of a scientific conference on obesity:

The three-day meeting was infused with an implicit understanding of what obesity is not: a personal failing. No presenter argued that humans collectively lost willpower around the 1980s, when obesity rates took off, first in high-income countries‌, then in much of the rest of the world. Not a single scientist said our genes changed in that short time. Laziness, gluttony‌‌ and sloth were not referred to as obesity’s helpers. In stark contrast to a prevailing societal view of obesity, which assumes people have full control over their body size, they didn’t blame individuals for their condition, the same way we don’t blame people suffering from the effects of undernutrition, like stunting and wasting. The researchers instead referred to obesity as a complex, chronic condition, and they were meeting to get to the bottom of why humans have, collectively, grown larger over the past half century. To that end, they shared a range of mechanisms that might explain the global obesity surge. And their theories, however diverse, made one thing obvious: As long as we treat obesity as a personal responsibility issue, its prevalence is unlikely to decline.

In a Ukraine update Kos of Kos included a tweet from Tendar about Putin meeting with wives and mothers of dead and wounded Russian soldiers. Several of those women sitting around the table with him have been identified as actresses. The rest probably are too.

It is so revealing that with more than 80.000 killed Russian soldiers Putin couldn't find (or risk) to sit with a few widows. Pathetic to the core.

Mark Sumner of Kos wrote that at the start of the war Republicans almost completely sided with Ukraine. Before the election Republicans were eager to support Putin by stopping support of Ukraine and even pulling out of NATO. Putin pribably won’t conquer Ukraine but certainly conquered the GOP. This fealty of Putin got to the point that Russians were counting on the Red Wave (that didn’t happen) to “save their illegal, unprovoked, war-crime laden invasion of Ukraine.” Even Russian soldiers were hoping for a Republican win. The desire to please Putin began, of course, with the nasty guy’s adoration of the dictator and his desire to pull out of NATO. The now want to “gift Russia with something that Russia could never win on the battlefield; not just victory over Ukraine, but victory over NATO. And the United States.” Sumner followed that with a recognition of Holodomor Remembrance Day, which was Saturday. Ninety years ago a drought caused a food shortage in Russia, which was relieved by the Red Army, under Stalin’s direction, stealing Ukraine’s corn and wheat. At least 3 million and maybe as many as 10 million Ukrainians died of hunger. There is chatter around Russia saying that to punish Ukraine for resisting there should be a second Holodomor. Jack Watling, a researcher into land warfare, tweeted a thread about fighting in winter. No leaves on trees means the infantry has to stay low, which means dealing with cold and wet. Stay wet for too long and the soldier is no longer effective and can die. The lower levels of command must watch their troops, rotating them into a warm space as needed. Ukrainians, with the help of Finland, have learned how to keep dry, what to watch for, and how to warm up their soldiers. NATO is also providing proper cold weather gear. Russians don’t have the low level command, don’t have the gear, don’t have the training, don’t have the warming areas. A lot of them will die from exposure. And Ukraine can accelerate that by skirmishing just enough to keep Russians in their trenches. Sumner also discussed Russians and hypothermia.

Death is only the final act of hypothermia. Well before that last act there is a classic suite of symptoms: exhaustion, confusion, loss of coordination, loss of memory, slurred speech, extreme drowsiness. Put all this together, and it could explain what’s happening with Russian forces in eastern Ukraine.

And what’s happening is a lot of Russian soldiers are so cold they are acting like zombies with no reaction to bombs going off around them. Many of those bomb are because the soldiers have bonfires to keep warm – and give away their position. Russia has an alliance, their counterpart to NATO. It’s falling apart as the other nations see how badly Russia is losing. It’s so bad that Azerbaijan, formerly of that alliance, will supply Ukraine with equipment to restore the electrical grid. That attempt to keep the Ukrainian utilities in a shambles means Russia is low on missiles to launch. They are taking the nukes out of long distance missiles and firing them at Ukraine. This sort of missile won’t cause a lot of damage, but it may draw rockets of Ukraine’s civil defense system, allowing more destructive missiles to get through. Stratcom, the Ukrainian center for strategic communication, tweeted a NASA image from November 24 of Eastern Europe at night. City lights from northern Italy, Istanbul, Moscow, Stockholm, Oslo, and many other places are clearly seen. But Ukraine is quite dark. Strangely, so is Hungary (and I don’t have an explanation of that). Charles Jay of the Kos community told part of the story of the Ukrainian Special Operations Forces. These small groups have played a sizable role in the war in particular incidents where their small numbers did significant damage. I’ll let you read it. Speaking of zombies... Rebekah Sager of Kos discussed her fascination of zombie stories. She wrote that she frequently thinks about whether she would be prepared if a zombie popped up in front of her.

After years of being laughed at by friends and family about being kind of a zombophile, I had to ask myself why I was so fascinated by them. And I finally figured it out. As a Black woman who is Jewish and whose mother was a lesbian, history shows us that my people—all of them—have been targeted for centuries. The monsters may be different, and they’re not undead, of course, but the goal of devouring me is identical. ... The threats to marginalized Americans and others are real and daily. The fear that white people have about being replaced is so deep-seated that they will walk into a grocery store in a predominantly Black neighborhood or a synagogue or a church and open fire—and have. These monsters are real, and they are dangerous, and it doesn’t matter that they have laws, policies, law enforcement, justices, and lawmakers to protect them, they still have a craven desire to be solely in power, and they will do whatever it takes to keep it that way.

One of the basic ideas of the MAGA crowd is they want to take their country back. Dartagnan of the Kos community wants Republicans to know he also wants to take his country back. As a youth he and his dad roamed all over rural Pennsylvania hunting and fishing. They would visit small towns and feel welcome. They would see plentiful game. And saw no sign of politics. Now many areas are restricted because of fracking. He must be careful of the fish he catches because of possible mercury poisoning. The small town diners are replaced with chains. And the politics is in your face. All that projects a hostile attitude and he feels like an unwanted visitor.

That country, the one where you didn’t have to think about or acknowledge the political environment wherever it was you were going, no longer exists. The mask has been ripped off, and what’s beneath is seething, unabashed racism, looking for an outlet. And, boy, do they hate us. The truth is a lot of them would be more than happy to kill us. That’s the natural result of all the nonstop demonization that Fox News pours into their ears and eyeballs every day. Ultimately it doesn’t matter what ginned-up grievance motivates them, because they’ve been taught to hate. As long as Fox News and Donald Trump have told them, it’s fine, that’s all they need to know

. Dartagnan mentioned the McCarthyism of the early 1950s.

But it’s a different kind of McCarthyism that’s out there now, one that smolders just beneath the thin veneer of civility, one that gets its juices recharged every night through Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and the never-ending panoply of virulent racists yammering away on addictive social media platforms. It’s not one susceptible to being wiped out simply by taking one individual out of the picture. It can’t be shamed because it knows no shame in the first place. And it’s channeling something far more lethal and longstanding in this country than fear of Communism ever was.

That hate is defacing idyllic rural Pennsylvania and will continue until we as a nation figure out how to stop it. That will take a while.

Until then, the countryside I loved so much as a boy will never have the same appeal to me. These people always say they “want their country back.” Well, I’d dearly love to have my country back, too. But I’m pretty sure that’s not going to happen anytime soon.

Wednesday will mark one year since the shooting at the Oxford High School, north of Detroit. It is about six months since the shooting at Robb Elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. The Sunday Detroit Free Press (in an article behind a paywall in such a way I can’t share a link) told the story of several Oxford teens traveling to Uvalde to have a party with the survivors. Part of it was the older kids saying I know what you’re going through because I’ve been there too. Part of it was all of them, children and teens, learning how to be a kid again. I’m so glad they had that party. I so wish they didn’t have to.

Dedicated to publicizing the character of the Republican inquisitors

I finished the book Finding Joy by Adriana Herrera. The title is a play on words because the narrator is Desta and his name, in the Amharic language of Ethiopia, means joy. He’s a biracial American who lived in Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa up to the age of three. He’s back for two months to do survey work in the southern part of the country for US Aid. On his second day he meets Elias, who will be his driver. Desta is immediately smitten. A big question is whether Elias is also gay and how does one find out in a country that is not friendly to LGBTQ people? I was surprised that this recent book, published in 2020, references another recent book, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz, published in 2012. I read it though didn’t blog about it. Desta has this and several other audio books, plus lots of music, downloaded onto his phone for something to listen to on long drives. He and Elias listen to it and he hopes it will reveal if Elias is gay. Elias enjoys the story but says nothing more. But Desta and Elias are shown embracing on the cover so we know where this is going. In a romance story between an outsider and a local there are three possible endings – the outsider stays, the local leaves with the outsider, or they have their moment of love and split up. Desta is quite afraid it will be the third possibility. Before we get to that Desta has to decide what he wants to do next and Elias is tired of being closeted. This was a breezy 210 pages. I enjoyed it. Joan McCarter of Daily Kos discussed a story reported on The Verge that says many of the online tax services have been sending customer financial info to Facebook. And tax returns contain a great deal of a person’s financial info. The companies include H&R Block, TaxAct, and TaxSlayer. It is enough info that Facebook can integrate it with what else they know about these customers. These tax preparation companies are the same ones (plus a few more) that prevent the government from doing our taxes for us. The government has enough information – income and such – that they could send us completed returns and most of the time we could simply confirm it is correct. The government could then send us the bill or the refund. Almost all other countries do it this way. And it costs citizens nothing – well maybe the cost of stamps and the time to verify numbers. But these tax companies spend millions lobbying to make sure we have to use them and to pay to use them and to pay to have them electronically file for us. Since 2021 I’ve used my own system of spreadsheets to do taxes. I recognize I’m good enough with spreadsheets that I can do this. I’m aware many other people aren’t. Before 2021 I used a couple different tax programs on my own computer, never on their website. Does this betrayal go back far enough that Facebook has my financial data? I don’t know. Tax companies are probably not the only companies to share personal information with Facebook. Biden’s granddaughter Naomi was married on the White House South Lawn last weekend. This was a private event. The press was not invited. Before the event the wedding party allowed Vogue to do a photo shoot. Vogue was not at the actual wedding. Hunter of Kos says the White House Pres Corp is back to doing what it does best – sniping. They accused Biden of lying about no press at the wedding. And somehow that lie (which wasn’t a lie) was more serious than anything the nasty guy and his daughter and son-in-law ever did. Which means (1) the WH Press Corps can only report news of the sort of a rich or important person said something and (2) this Press Corps is jealous of others encroaching on its role of being the celebrity reporters for the Capital. Just don’t ask them to report on anything that is, you know, important. Naomi is the daughter of Hunter Biden, so this is a good excuse to next discuss a photo essay by Walter Einenkel of Kos of the evidence against Hunter and his laptop. The whole thing is something about Hunter being corrupt because he cashed in on his father being Vice President and then President of the USA. So this photo essay shows many of the times Hunter took advantage of his father’s position to make big money. Shame on ... Oh, wait. This is really strange. None of the photos in this essay show Hunter Biden. Instead, they all show the pandemic prince and princess. Perhaps ... nah ... but perhaps ... the prince and princess are the ones who are corrupt and should be investigated? And Hunter is ... sheesh, I’d hate to say it ... innocent? Alas, I don’t think any Republican investigation will be redirected. As Republicans increase their promises to investigate Hunter Biden (and Dr. Fauci and Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas and anyone else that seems to be doing something good for the country) Democrats are coming up with ways to fight back. Dartagnan of the Kos community reported that Democrat strategists have created a “war room” dedicated to highlighting and publicizing the character and connections of the Republican inquisitors. The war room will investigate and report such things as who funds the inquisitor’s campaigns. There are also shady things in the pasts of such people as Jim Jordan (allegedly ignoring the sexual abuse around him) and Matt Gaetz (allegedly paying for sex). I hope Democrats have stiff enough spines to actually do this. Kerry Eleveld of Kos reported Republicans will have a difficult time dealing with the nasty guy declaring a third run for president. All the scenarios look bad – for them. Nasty guy loyalist voters, now only 47% of Republicans, might be enough to give him the nomination, but since the rest of the country is so sick of him it’s not enough for him to win the election. If the nasty guy doesn’t get the nomination that 47% could feel alienated and not vote. That could cripple the nominee. And if the nasty guy doesn’t get the nomination he might want to burn down the GOP by making a third party run. He could be so disgruntled he won’t care his actions could give the election to the Democratic nominee. He may not be able to get on the ballot as an independent in all 50 states but he could do it in enough states to make the GOP nominee lose. He’ll want to prove the Republicans can’t win without him. All that sounds good for Democrats. I’d want to say “please proceed” but his rhetoric is dangerous for the country and I don’t want another two years of it. I had previously written that the nasty guy is losing Evangelical support. Aldous Pennyfarthing of the Kos community also discussed that. I mention it because of the last two paragraphs:

Of course, ever since Constantine, many Christians have seen sidling up to power as the best strategy for promoting their own interpretations of Jesus’ message—which, to be clear, included exactly nothing about abortion. And now they appear to be sidling away from Trump, who seems to have suddenly contracted a form of political leprosy even Jesus can’t heal. That’s great news for America, but that doesn’t mean America isn’t still thirsty for snake oil, and if Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis—who presented himself as God’s gift to the Sunshine State in a recent campaign ad—becomes Republicans’ new panacea, the cure may actually turn out to be worse than the disease.

Rebekah Sager of Kos reported that just days after announcing his run the nasty guy signed a $4 billion deal with a Saudi real estate company to build a mammoth project in Oman. Definitely a conflict of interest, though just one of about 3400. I think the report implies the whole project is $4B – which is a huge real estate project – and not the amount the nasty guy will pocket. Which leads to a question. What does the nasty guy contribute to the deal? Brand? It’s tarnished. Money? He doesn’t seem to have much. Expertise? Everything he touches turns to dust. Well qualified workers? They seem to be fleeing. Which implies the only reason why he was included in the deal was because it is a way for Saudis to pay him off for services rendered or secrets spilled. Anyone want to speculate whether the buildings in this real estate project actually get built?

They’re not even really bothering with the “thoughts and prayers”

Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Thanksgiving Day edition of Cheers and Jeers for Daily Kos, has a good list of things to be thankful for. David Neiwert of Kos reviewed the far right media response to the mass shooting at the LGBTQ Club Q in Colorado Springs. Excerpts:

They’re not even really bothering with the “thoughts and prayers” or expressions of regret at the violence after the mass shootings they inspire any longer. No, the people who have been targeting the LGBTQ community with classic stochastic terrorism—dehumanizing and demonizing them, describing them as worthy of violent expulsion, and then leaving the violence to the angry extremists they inspire—are just making the briefest of nods before moving straight ahead with the narrative that really, the victims had it coming, and the perpetrators were entirely justified. ... “Put them to death. Put all queers to death. They die,” proclaimed one fundamentalist preacher, adding: “When they die, that stops the pedophilia. It’s a very, very simple process.” ... That’s their position: Either stop providing children with material that might make them think of LGBTQ people as normal, and stop providing gender-affirming care to children who need it, or expect to be mowed down at random by one of the terrorists who agrees with us that you’re a bunch of pedophiles by nature. Fall into line with us or prepare to face the consequences. ... This is, again, how stochastic terrorism has always worked: Announce and identify the target with eliminationist rhetoric, and then let random actors inspired by the surrounding hateful rhetoric conduct the acts of violence it’s intended to inspire. Statistically predictable, but individually unpredictable. “The way they soften up the support for this kind of violence is essentially by making it seem morally justified in the minds of people who believe this,” Alejandra Caraballo of Harvard Law School told NBC News. “The way they do this is by constantly painting LGBT people as pedophiles and ‘groomers,’ and so people feel morally justified in carrying out this violence.”

Kevin Kallaugher of The Economist tweeted a cartoon from 2012. It shows a service of the American Church of the Firearm. In the corner one guy asks, “Attendance seems low lately... Where is everybody?” His neighbor replies, “Funerals.” Deep within the reader comments for a pundit roundup on Kos, rebel ga included a meme that says, “Fox News: Rich people paying Rich people to tell Middle Class people to blame Poor people.” I hear about the World Cup soccer matches only because news reports include the score of the US team’s latest match or there is a human interest story of one of the players. There is a lot of chatter of what Qatar did to get the rights to host the games and how they’re treating fans who showed up to watch. Val Katayev tweeted a thread about how much Qatar spent to host the games:

Qatar spent $220 BILLION on the 2022 World Cup. Their GDP is just $180B. Is this investment a money pit? Or a catalyst for a nation to thrive?

What Qatar spent is 15 times more than what Brazil spent 8 years ago, which was $15B. Even if that is spread over ten years that is still 10% of GDP each year. It built 8 stadiums of which 7 are temporary. For 1.3 million visitors it built 108 hotels, plus luxury tents in the desert and has cruise ships offshore, plus a new metro system. It spent $220B in hopes of taking in $17B. Also, to build all that somewhere between 6,500 and 15,000 lives, mostly migrant workers, were lost. Qatar did this for the world’s attention. It is getting it, but in a bad way. I looked at a map and guess the peninsula Qatar is on is about 120 miles by 40 miles. Katayev says there are about 300K citizens. So the country spent almost $1 million per citizen. I heard stories that Qatar offered bounteous goodies to a head of state, who called in their FIFA member and demanded their vote go a particular way. I’m sure those goodies are not included in the $220B price tag. Several European soccer teams had been wearing armbands showing solidarity for LGBTQ rights. Laura Clawson of Kos has a picture of the armband, then reported Qatar demanded the armbands be removed. Alas, players from seven countries complied. FIFA is making it clear that it is buckling under Qatar’s demands. Since the World Cup is such a high point in a player’s career, they caved too. The Iranians showed they have a spine. When the Iranian national anthem was played before the match the team members kept their mouths shut. Fans in the stands also didn’t sing or booed their own national anthem. This is in solidarity with the protests that have continued for two months. Aysha Qamar of Kos reported on those continuing protests in Iran and the continuing attempts by the government to crack down. The German team redeemed themselves a bit. In a photo before a match, they hold their hands over their mouths to show they’re being silenced. Aldous Pennyfarthing of Kos quoted an article from CNN:

The US has intelligence that Russia may have delayed announcing its withdrawal from the Ukrainian city of Kherson in part to avoid giving the Biden administration a political win ahead of the midterm elections, according to four people familiar with the intelligence.

While there seems to be a pause in the action Kos of Kos discussed the Kremlin’s propaganda. Russia says countries should want to join us. It is proclaiming an anti-Western message, one of excessive consumption, of false happiness and illusory freedom, all based on allowing the gay parade. But what does Russia really have to offer? At the bottom of a chart showing the GDP of European countries are countries in Russian’s sphere or in the sphere of Serbia, which had been in Russia’s sphere. Wrote Kos:

This has always been Russia’s biggest PR problem—not their brutality and imperialism. The United States and Europe have their own legacy of brutality and imperialism, yet the world gravitates toward them because in the end, economic prosperity is more attractive than s---ing in a hole in an outhouse in the middle of winter.

The Russian people, and all other people in their influence, aren’t concerned about excessive consumption. They are worried about insufficient consumption. In another post Kos explained why there seems to be a pause in the battle action – mud. We rejoiced in mud season last spring because it stalled Russian advances. Alas, this mud season affects Ukraine too. Russia has been brutally bombing Ukrainian infrastructure so residents are without electricity and heat during the winter. I’ve heard several stories of Ukrainians coping in a variety of ways. But making non-combatants suffer is terrorism. In a third post Kos reported the European Parliament adopted a resolution recognizing Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism. The US hasn’t approved a terrorist designation because doing so requires sanctions with those who do business with Russia. Which includes Europe. Russia is furious at being labeled a terrorist. So they responded with more terror. And Ukraine responded by holding a concert by the National Philharmonic of Ukraine in Kyiv illuminated by candles and the lights from smartphones. And the country is getting pretty good at restoring electricity within a day or so. A tweet from Amazing Maps shows “None of the countries that bordered Poland before 1990 exist today.” In 1989 Poland was bordered by East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and the USSR. In 2022 Poland is bordered by Germany, Czechia, Slovakia, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, and the Kaliningrad region of Russia. I checked a detail – that change didn’t happen between 1989 and 2022. It happened between 1989 and 1993, which is when Czechoslovakia split. Amazing Maps also tweeted what Antarctica without ice would look like. There are a few mountain ranges and then huge bays, several big lakes, and lots of islands. And looking a lot smaller than we think it looks now. We don’t need to find out if this realization is accurate.

Mourn the Dead. Fight Like Hell for the Living.

On Sunday I watched Young Royals season 2 episodes 3 & 4. It is the story of Prince Wilhelm of Sweden who has fallen in love with Simon, a commoner. After I watched episodes 1 & 2 I wrote that one aspect of this season’s story is vengeance for a betrayal at the end of last season. Now it looks like the possibility of reverse vengeance. By that I mean person A betrayed person B and B has been making A’s life miserable. That’s being done through indirect means – psychological games. Now A has been given incentive to target B again. Which makes me wonder if the queen understands the situation. A good (as in not boring) romance story puts the lovers through challenges. And there are definitely challenges. Beyond that I don’t want to spoil the story. I finished the book The Girl With the Louding Voice by Abi Daré. The story is told by Adunni, a 14 year old girl in Nigeria. Her mother assured her she would go to school, which she adores. A louding voice is one that can speak for itself, that others will listen to. She knows a voice can be louding through education. But Mama died and Papa needs money. So he sold her to be the third wife of Morufu whose first two wives have given him only daughters. When something happens to the pregnant second wife Adunni has good reason to believe she will be blamed, so flees. Mr. Kola gives her a ride into Lagos to work for Big Madam – fortunately not that kind of Madam. Adunni is to clean the house, though her salary is paid to Mr. Kola, who disappears. Big Madam is cruel. Big Daddy is lecherous. The previous girl left under mysterious circumstances. She does have a friend in Kofi, the chef. And the house has a library, where she continues her education. She eventually meets Ms. Tia from down the street and is drawn to Ms. Tia’s kindness. Through her Adunni learns of a scholarship at a boarding school given to young domestic workers like herself. Tia helps her apply. Through it all Adunni shows how strong she is. She maintains her kindness for others and her drive for becoming someone important while struggling to understand injustice. I had thought the novel would be about the importance of education, how Adunni got what she needed and where that took her in life. But there is only a hint of that at the end. However, in the author interview at the end of the book she says the story is about the plight of many young Nigerian housemaids, how they are lured into what becomes slavery without chains and how badly they are treated. Adunni tells the story in a style of English of one who knows many of the words, but not how they fit together, as if English is a second language or she learned it in a community that freely mixed English words with the local language. Even so she can express complex thoughts, to the point I wondered if the author forgot to keep the dialect going. Here is an example from page 7:

My head been stoning my mind with many questions since this morning, questions that are not having answers. What is it meaning, to be the wife of a man with two wifes and four childrens? What is making Morofu to want another wife on top the already two? And Papa, why is he wanting to sell me to a old man with no any thinking of how I am feeling? Why didn’t he keep the promise he make to Mama before she dead?

This book is a good one. I downloaded Michigan COVID data. I get the data from here. The program I wrote to draw a chart of the data says Tuesday, the day this data was last updated, is three days short of a thousand days of data. Michigan’s data goes back to March 1, 2020. A thousand days from then will be tomorrow, November 25, 2022. The peaks in the number of new cases per day for the last few weeks are 1537, 1615, 1250, and 1080. I like this trend! But the pandemic isn’t over yet. The deaths per day for the last week is in the single digits. That’s also great news, though I wonder if data collection is up to date. Another mass shooting. Another mass shooting in an LGBTQ club, this one is Club Q in Colorado Springs. A mass shooting in what is supposed to be an LGBTQ safe space. Five LGBTQ people and allies dead just a few minutes before the start of Transgender Day of Remembrance. I think two of the dead were trans. There were also 25 injured. Lauren Sue of Daily Kos has details. She also collected a litany of anti-gay and anti-trans rhetoric that has been coming from Republicans and from the far right. She also lists the 37 Republican Senators who voted against the Respect for Marriage Act working its way through Congress. Gabe Ortiz of Kos lists and describes the five people who died in this shooting. They are Daniel Aston – transgender, Kelly Loving – I think transgender, Ashley Paugh – not a member of the LGBTQ community and just enjoying a good time, Derrick Rump, and Raymond Green Vance – also not LGBTQ and there for a birthday party. The community is pleased that when Police Chief Adrian Vasquez read off the names he also included pronoun preferences. David Neiwert of Kos explained the prominent role stochastic terrorism played in the case. We don’t know much about the motives of this particular shooter, but ...

What we do know, however, is that this horrific act of domestic terrorism occurred in a cultural environment in which the LGBTQ community has been under siege by an American far-right apparatus wielding eliminationist rhetoric: Demonizing and dehumanizing them (particularly transgender people and drag queens) as pedophilic “groomers,” attacking specific events that are targeted by far-right social-media influencers, and setting them up for a range of levels of violence, including the extreme and lethal kinds. This is exactly how stochastic terrorism works.

Neiwert then discussed who this shooter is. He then discussed previous events and talking heads that have been spewing rhetoric sounding like calls to terrorism. Ortiz reported that Richard Fierro was at Club Q with his wife, daughter, and daughter’s boyfriend. When the shooting started Fierro’s military training kicked in. He raced across the room, pulled the gunman to the floor, jumped on him, and beat him with his own weapon. An unnamed drag performer also beat him with their high heels. His daughter’s boyfriend was Raymond Green Vance, who died in the shooting. Leah McElrath tweeted an image created by NoBonzo that could be printed and used for coloring therapy. It shows people lighting candles around the words “Mourn the Dead. Fight Like Hell for the Living.” Mike Luckovich tweeted a cartoon. On the left is the rally outside the Capitol that turned into an attack. The caption says, “Lies about the election caused this.” On the right side is an image of Club Q wrapped in crime scene tape. The captions says, “Lies about LGBTQ caused this.” Kevin Necessary tweeted a cartoon showing an elephant wearing a MAGA hat offering a gun to a young boy. The elephant says in part, “Lash out at those who are different than you. ... And if ya feel threatened, well, that’s why ya got this baby.” The caption says, “The Groomer.” Just a few days of that shooting was another. This one had six dead in Chesapeake, Virginia. M Adryael Tong tweeted a thread starting by saying that back in the 2000s the Human Rights Campaign removed gender identity from the Employment Non Discrimination Act to help get it passed.

There was a conscious decision that was made in the aughts to focus on gay and lesbian acceptance especially for wealthy, white gender-conforming people. Incrementalism, people said. I said back then it was BS and I said back then we’d pay for it. And lo and behold.

And we’re paying for it in far right people who can’t or won’t tell the difference between a drag queen and a trans woman. We have to support the whole community. I had mentioned above that 37 Republicans voted against the Respect for Marriage Act. From an article posted last week – before that procedural vote – Joan McCarter of Kos describes the bill and what it does. It is on the Senate agenda, and will likely be passed (though I haven’t heard that it has). It is on the agenda because Justice Clarence Thomas has invited cases that would overturn the 2013 decision that found the Defense of Marriage Act to be unconstitutional. So the big thing the RFMA will do is repeal DOMA. However, RFMA does not protect the Supreme Court ruling that grants same-sex marriage. Congress can’t – the high court has an anti-commandeering doctrine that says the federal government can’t force states to pass state laws. What Congress can do is withhold funding from states that don’t pass their own laws. Marriage is a state issue, as we saw in the early 2010s as one state after another approved same-sex marriage. While the Supreme Court can declare a state law violates the federal constitution, Congress does not have the same power. So if the Supremes reverse themselves Congress can’t fill in the gaps (and all that makes me wonder about a federal law that mandates the right to an abortion in all states or bans abortion in all states). What RFMA can do is regulate marriage across state boundaries. And it does – if a couple gets married in one state and then lives in another the state where they live must honor the marriage and honor the children of the marriage. RFMA also repeats what is happening now, that a religious denomination cannot be forced to conduct a same-sex wedding. That clause allows the Mormon church to support it. McElrath, who has started using Mastodon to establish a presence in case Twitter goes down, tweeted (or whatever the Mastodon equivalent is) to add a bit to McCarter’s explanation:

Alert: There’s a bipartisan bill being considered by the Senate that’s being promoted as “codifying same-sex marriage” rights. Except it doesn’t. The “Respect for Marriage” Act merely guarantees federal recognition of same-sex marriages recognized at the state level. If SCOTUS overturns Obergefell (which is likely), many states will revert to pre-existing laws prohibiting same-sex marriages or pass new ones.

Michel Martin of NPR talked to Kate Sosin, the LGBTQ+ reporter for The 19th, a nonprofit news outlet that focuses on gender policy and politics. They talked about the recent election results in a time of so much anti-gay and anti-trans rhetoric. Some of Sosin’s points: Yes, there are a lot of anti-trans bills. Those having to do with gender-affirming care reject what doctors and scientists say about treating gender dysphoria and replace it with what Republican lawmakers say. Less than 5% of voters said gender-affirming care or trans kids in sports was a motivating issue in why they voted. For the vast majority of people this isn’t an issue. It’s only an issue for the Republican base. This year state legislatures introduced 344 anti-LGBTQ bills. 25 passed. Also, there were 1,065 LGBTQ candidates on the ballot and 340 of them were elected. Also, 1 in 5 hate crimes are motivated by anti-LGBTQ bias. Alisa Chang of NPR talked to two trans people elected to state legislatures in 2022. They are James Roesener of New Hampshire and Zooey Zephyr of Montana. Zephyr ran because she was alarmed with several anti-LGBTGQ bills in the Montana Legislature in 2021. She testified against one of them and saw others pass by one vote. Friends left the state, even though they lived in a caring community. That prompted her to run. She added:

And in Montana, when the Department of Public Health and Human Services proposed a new rule about banning updating your birth certificate if you're trans, they held a public hearing, and one person came out to support that anti-trans piece of legislation and 100 came out in opposition to it. And that's across Montana. And if it's true here, I know it's true across the country as well.

Roesener has volunteered at a clinic that provides gender-affirming care and abortion care. Things became personal when laws threatened to lock up friends for providing health care.

The House loss through unforced errors

I read the transcript for the Gaslit Nation episode for Tuesday, November 15, a week after the election (and before Republicans won the House and Pelosi stepped down). Sarah Kendzior and Andrea Chalupa host the show and I wanted to get their take on the results. It’s been a while since I’ve read one of their regular episodes, mostly because what they have to say can be rather grim – Kendzior describes herself as a writer of horror non-fiction. Chalupa described a case by what she calls a Vichy Democrat. This one is Sean Patrick Maloney, who acts more like a rich Republican than a Democrat, though he is the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Mondaire Jones is a gay black man from New York’s Hudson Valley and was a part of the House Progressive Caucus, a rising voice. He had won on an environmental platform. Maloney declared that as head of DCCC he could push Jones aside and be that candidate of that district. Maloney lost because the people of the district didn’t like the way he betrayed Jones. In the process Maloney spent money on his own campaign that would have more wisely been spent helping Democrats in tight races. This is a Democrat whose policies are more Republican pushing out a progressive Democrat and because of that betrayal lost the seat to an actual Republican. This is the leadership essentially giving the seat away. This is an unforced error (I looked it up – a loss because of a player’s blunder, not an opponent’s skill). Chalupa said that Pelosi had to have known about it and gave at least her tacit approval. Chalupa added Maloney was serving a mega donor class though he is a leader in a party that doesn’t need money from the mega donor class. Democrats have done quite well raising lots of money through small dollar donations from regular people. Another example was Christy Smith in California, who is also a progressive. In 2020 she won by a tiny margin. In 2022, instead of giving her solid backing, the Democratic Party primaried her, which drained her resources. Though she won the primary, the party didn’t fund her and she was massively outspent. She lost. Two progressives down. Two seats handed to Republicans. Kendzior said:

People turned out in droves once again, in particular young people and in particular young women. People did care about the threat to reproductive rights. ... The thing that is holding us back—besides the fact that we are a burgeoning mafia state, but this goes hand in hand with that—is the lack of campaign finance reforms. It's all of these proxy networks that want to manipulate our elections, often for foreign countries. ... I look back to 2017/2018 before the Democrats won the House and as a party they were in much better shape because everyone was kind of on the same page and they were not backstabbing each other so relentlessly. That backstabbing is a product of one, Pelosi and her style of leadership in putting people like Maloney in charge of things like the DCCC, but also their incredibly shady, awful dark money donor network, which is not as bad as the Republicans but is really out there.

And with the Republicans in control of the House the voters will be told, You didn’t vote hard enough. To which Chalupa replies. Oh, yes we did! Maloney, even as head of DCCC, doesn’t get the credit for the tiny red wave. The voters do. The voters were responding to the Supreme Court endangering the lives of women. That’s why they voted and did so in record numbers. They voted against Republicans, not necessarily for Democrats. They voted with the realization that Republicans protect rich people and may not protect less wealthy white people, that their government will also treat them as disposable. Where did Democrats have their greatest defeat? Not in red Missouri, but in New York, what was thought to be blue, but is really purple. Coastal reporters like to find people with MAGA hats in a diner. But the real heart of the nasty guy base is Wall Street. It’s rich people – like Maloney. New York is just as racist as the South, as the rest of the country, though it doesn’t wave the Confederate flag. That racism is, of course, in government. The point of mentioning that is parties should not base their spending on old stereotypes and generalizations, one being that New York is blue. Campaigns also need to be local. Fetterman did that in Pennsylvania, even using lots of in-jokes. He was able to portray his opponent Dr. Oz as an outsider. Another example is a ballot measure in New York that would have given Democrats an advantage over the redistricting process. Republicans, of course, spent massively against it. Democrats spent ... zero. It lost. There is also lots of talk of New York City being a cesspool of crime. Perhaps because someone is calling for bail reform? Yet crime statistics show the city is much safer than 40-50 years ago. Yeah, politicians are saying that. So are newspapers – which represent the rich people of the city. Kendzior said:

Whereas the real crises of New York City, they're happening in skyscrapers. They're happening in boardrooms. They're happening on stock markets. They're happening in the police force. That is where the real brutality of New York City lies. That is how people—ordinary New Yorkers—are getting hurt in New York City; not by criminals and thieves and whatnot. That is so minor compared to the terrible, terrible white-collar crime and governmental crime that is being perpetrated against the people in New York. And I just wanna throw that in there in case people think I hate New Yorkers. I don’t. New Yorkers are great. It's the New York City apparatus that built Trump and Giuliani and all these other horrible people that I can't stand. So just to make that clear.

There is a crime problem – incorrectly described. There’s also a mental health crisis due to the pandemic, and an education crisis. So what are candidates running on? Crime perpetrated by black people. Crime that is tolerated by progressives. New York Democrats suffer from believing the divisive lies of Republicans and a state party system that has calcified. The leaders are at war with progressives when they should be at war with fascists. The first Gen Z member of Congress, a Democrat, was elected in Florida. But isn’t Florida deep red? Only because Democrats surrendered it, stopped investing in it. That Gen Z member won through grassroots effort, not because of Pelosi and the Democratic leadership. Gen Z is coming for the leadership’s jobs because they’re pissed, not because it is their job to clean up the messes. I had written about Pelosi stepping back from Democratic House leadership and all the praise articles written to honor her 20 years in leadership. I heard and read more of those sorts of pieces today. Many mentioned how she got the Affordable Care Act passed and how she kept her cool during the Capitol attack, among many other accomplishments. She does deserve the praise. But it isn’t the whole story. As I mentioned before she had accepted donations from Russians, which calls her loyalties into question. And this discussion by Kendzior and Chalupa shows that she protected the Democratic establishment, which meant sorely needed progressives were defeated. Yes, it is time she stepped off the stage and I’m glad she recognized that and did it.

Even his base can’t trust him now

Joan McCarter of Daily Kos reported that Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said she will not run for House Democratic leadership in January. This comes after Republicans won enough seats to take over the House. Pelosi will continue to serve as the representative from San Francisco. She had led the House Democrats for about 20 years under four presidents (though she didn’t mention the nasty guy) and that gave her two stretches of serving as Speaker. Pelosi said it is time for a younger generation (she’s in her 80s) to take over the leadership. Following her lead, #2 Steny Hoyer and #3 Jim Clyburn will also step down. McCarter liveblogged Pelosi’s announcement speech. She was the first woman to hold the job as Speaker and did a very good job of it, keeping her caucus in line during the nasty guy years (something her GOP replacement probably won’t be able to do with the same size caucus). Elwood Down of the Kos community posted those slated to be voted in as the leadership team on Nov. 30. They are Hakeem Jeffries, a black man, Katherine Clark, and Pete Aguilar. Jeffries had done a great job as a manager of the Democratic case during one of the nasty guy’s impeachment trials. Papo tweeted an image of Pelosi being hugged by the Constitution, saying she has always been about protecting the people. It’s a great image. But I don’t think it is entirely accurate and someday soon I plan to pull another voice or two about that. For now I’ll say there are several things she didn’t do that could have helped our country and democracy. She has also been corrupted through donations from corporations and even Russians. Yeah, Republicans have taken control of the House. Stephen Wolf of Kos Elections said the reason why the were able to do so is simple – gerrymandering. In a margin this small who drew the districts made enough of a difference. Republicans were more successful at it after the 2020 census and more able to avoid having courts overturn their maps. And Republicans weren’t restrained by an election law calling on every state to use an independent citizens redistricting commission because Joe Manchin made sure that law didn’t get passed. McCarter reported that Republicans, now that they will control the House, have announced their predictable agenda. No mention of policy – Walter Einenkel of Kos reported they didn’t answer those kinds of questions. Nothing about inflation, gas prices, violent crime (the issue they ran on), or immigration. There is one thing on the agenda: vengeance. For what? It doesn’t matter. One could start with: taking the White House away from the nasty guy or actually having a government that attempts to fix or relieve the problems of citizens. So they’ve already sent letters to various government officials warning them to be ready for upcoming investigations and document subpoenas. They’re not interested in making government work. Which means Democrats have December to get important things done. At the top of the list is pushing through electoral count reforms and getting rid of the debt limit so the bomb throwers in the House can’t hold the economy hostage. There’s also a COVID relief bill and restoring child tax credits as monthly payments. And what are Democrats doing? McCarter reported that Dick Durban, #2 Democrat in the Senate, said his chamber, which will remain in Dem hands, will be focused during December getting progressive judges passed. Yo, Dick! You can do that next yer because judges don’t have to go before the House and the House isn’t going to be sending over any bills anyway. Defusing the debt limit can’t wait. McCarter reported the vengeance will start with Hunter Biden’s laptop. Yeah, because Benghazi worked so well for Republicans. Then there’s Dr. Fauci. And they’ll come up with a reason to impeach Biden, even though their reason won’t be true. The nasty guy has announced he is running for president in 2024. Hunter of Kos reported there was a story in the Washington Post the day before saying sources said the nasty guy took all those top secret document to Mar-a-Lago not because he wanted to profit from them but because he just wanted to keep them for some ego reason. Hunter wrote, first, there are way too many unnamed sources in the Post’s story. Second, the reason for the theft is irrelevant. Third, this isn’t news, though the timing of this story might be.

The "news" is that it's still an absolute certainty that Donald Trump stole classified national security documents, some of them in the top ranks of classification, and that he possessed them illegally, lied about it, and violated laws yet again by stacking them in insecure locations in a building known to attract foreign intelligence agents. But there's no evidence he committed actual espionage! Everybody make sure you report that, on the day before Donald's Big Important History-Shaking Announcement! No provable espionage!

Jen Hayden of Kos reported the Rupert Murdoch news organizations have kicked the nasty guy to the curb. Fox News showed a display of thirteen other Republicans who are potential candidates in 2024. The *New York Post* ran a cover of *Trumpty Dumpty*. The day after the announcement the NYP had a line at the bottom of the front page that said something like, “Florida retiree makes an announcement, see page 26.” Sarah Longwell, publisher of The Bulwark, tweeted a link to an article there about the announcement. The tweet quotes from the article:

Bored, people tried to leave before Trump was even finished speaking. Others simply turned their back to him and talked through his remarks. Keep in mind, these attendees were ostensibly among his most dedicated and connected aides and supporters.

Other reports expanded on that “tried to leave” bit – the exits were blocked because the nasty guy didn’t want cameras to show the room was emptying. It’s not often bouncers keep people in. Hayden posted again with more details of the speech and the reaction to it. More importantly, the Pandemic Prince and Princess were not there. She issued a statement saying love my dad, but I’m going to prioritize my children and will stay out of politics. Hayden included an image of the short article on page 26. Ed Mazza of Huffpost reported that various Evangelical leaders are not going to back the nasty guy a third time. They now say such things as “He can’t even save himself,” and “He used us.” They will no longer close their eyes to the things he said that horrified them. Greg Dworkin, in a pundit roundup for Kos, quoted Gary Abernathy, a previous nasty guy defender, writing for WaPo. Abernathy wrote that DeSantis of Florida and Youngkin of Virginia are both nasty guy progenies. The base loves them and considers them natural heirs to the movement.

But attacking DeSantis and Youngkin is different than taking on Jeb Bush. It’s as though Trump suddenly started mocking Don Jr. or Ivanka. If Trump will turn on his proteges, his followers are realizing, he’ll turn on any of his acolytes. Even his base can’t trust him now.

Adam Zyglis of the Buffalo News tweeted a cartoon of the nasty guy riding an elephant and hitting the wall running. Mike Luckovich of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution tweeted a cartoon of a defendant at trial saying

Yo, Judge, before the verdict’s read, I’m officially announcing my run for president...

Ed Hall tweeted a cartoon of an elephant holding a sign saying “2022 Midterms” and the elephant saying, “How could we have lost so badly?” Behind him is a list of 20 nasty guy companies that have failed.

We shouldn't call it a celebration

I spent the afternoon at the Detroit Institute of Arts and their current exhibit of Van Gogh in America. The artist, who died in 1890 at the way too soon age of 37, did not set foot in America. The framing story of the exhibit is this artwork first being scorned, then embraced by American art museums and American collectors. The timing of the exhibit is because now is 100 years since the DIA was the first American museum to buy a Van Gogh. The purchase was criticized because so few people could make sense of the artist and his art. He was just too modern. Van Gogh as modern seems strange – we’ve seen Picasso, and Pollock. But his work, and that of his contemporaries, no longer went for accuracy in reproducing a scene and that was revolutionary. A show in 1928 that included Van Gogh’s work and one in 1935 that was exclusively his work and that traveled the country turned public perception of the artist. The last room of the exhibit includes a video of scenes from the Vincente Minnelli film Lust for Life, a biopic of Van Gogh’s life. This video criticizes that movie for portraying it subject as a “tortured genius” – that his artwork was a result of his mental anguish. That is not correct. Yes, Van Gogh did spend time getting treatment for mental illness. But his letters to his brother Theo show his desire and ability to create art were done through careful and deliberate steps. Alas, the Minnelli film still colors our perceptions of Van Gogh. I finished the book Winter’s Orbit by new author Everina Maxwell. It is both a gay romance and science fiction – and I like both of those. Prince Kiem of Iskat is thought of as the most disappointing of his generation of forty cousins. He is called before his grandmother the Emperor and is told he’ll have to give up his playboy ways because tomorrow he must marry Count Jainan of Thea. Iskat and Thea and a few other planets are to sign a Resolution in one month. That Resolution requires a marriage between an Iskat prince and a Thean diplomat. The marriage is the next day because it is the day after the end of the one month of mourning of Taam, who was Jainan’s previous partner. The wedding is not much more than the two of them signing the marriage contract. That night is awkward because Kiem assumes his new partner is still mourning and Jainan assumes he’s being rejected for being unworthy. Yeah, these guys are bad at communicating. The Auditor in charge of assuring all aspects of the Resolution are proper is taking way too long to agree the marriage is proper. And the palace Internal Security has flagged Jainan. The whole thing smells of cover-up. Figuring out what is being covered up takes our lads that whole month. That does give them time to fall in love before those trying to do the cover-up put them in grave peril. How much the humans of Iskat and Thea differ from earth humans of today is not explained. Jainan and Kiem are given only sparse descriptions of height and skin color. So one wonders about orientation and gender identity. Kiem admits to bedding both men and women. Jainan keeps his mouth shut. We do get another glimpse because men wear some sort of amulet made of wood and women wear one made of flint. Nonbinary characters wear neither. Does that imply men and women have become hard to tell apart? Or is the convention a handy way to alert another person to preferred pronouns? Since Kiem’s bisexuality is not remarked on does it imply a large portion of the population is also bisexual? That aspect of the story isn’t explained, it just is. In the decades that I’ve been reading science fiction magazines at one point an editor explained that a good science fiction story includes some new feature of science that is critical to the story. He used the example of an old Western story given a new setting and replacing bullets with lasers. But the new story is essentially no different than the Western. I felt much of this book is the same. The fancy wristbands central to their work and communication aren’t all that different from a smartwatch. This federation of planets could just as easily be a federation of nations on one planet (I felt Lois McMaster Bujold’s Barrayar series – and I’ve read and enjoyed them all – had the same issue). It isn’t until we’re 85% of the way through the story that we see a technology that is both something we don’t have now and critical to the story. Even with this quibble I enjoyed the story. While in a bookstore yesterday to buy the latest issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact magazine I saw a book with two young men on the cover. It is Self-Made Boys: A Great Gatsby Remix by Anna-Marie McLemore. The description says it follows the outline of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s original with the difference that both Nick and Jay Gatsby are transgender. The six online reviews declare it to be wonderful. But since I didn’t care much for the original (and avoided the DiCaprio movie) I won’t be buying this one. A little note on that page says this book is part of the Remixed Classics series. A search brought up: A Clash of Steel a remix of Treasure Island in which the lead pirates are a lesbian couple. Travelers Along the Way a remix of Robin Hood with a lesbian couple, though this is about the Crusades and not Nottingham Forest. And Teach the Torches to Burn a remix of Romeo and Juliet, in which the lovers are gay (won’t be released until next August) – the lovers of the original are already doomed because of the hatred of the two families so I’m not interested in a huge scoop of homophobia on top of it. I didn’t check out the details of the remixes of Little Women, Wuthering Heights, Jekyll & Hyde, Secret Garden, and Pride & Prejudice. I will agree it is important for us in the LGBTQ community to see ourselves in some of the literary classics. I suppose it is good business to supply such versions. Just don’t expect my dollar. Recently Niece declared that Pride & Prejudice & Zombies is much more interesting than the original. I haven’t read it, nor have I read classics updated with vampires and werewolves. I downloaded Michigan’s COVID data, updated two days ago. I didn’t report on the numbers a week ago because election day delayed timely updating. As of two days ago the peaks in new cases per day for the last few weeks are 1910, 1503, 1551, and 1183. Yes, the data is going in a good direction. A predicted increase with new variants hasn’t yet hit Michigan. I’ve been hearing Michigan’s data is no longer capturing the whole picture. Those doing home tests aren’t reporting cases to the state. So I considered looking at other sources of data, such as sewage sampling. Michigan provides that data, but through maybe a hundred individual sampling locations and without any composite data. Alisa Chang of NPR spoke to Lauren Frayer stationed in Mumbai about the United Nations estimating the world now has 8 billion humans on it. While the population growth of China and India may be slowing, the growth in Africa is not. I’m puzzled and annoyed that the UN is calling this a celebration. I suppose, as Andrea Wojnar, the India representative for the UN Population fund, says, we should celebrate people living longer and that there is a decline in maternal and infant mortality. But the world can’t handle so many people. Some say it can, but climate change and a scarcity of water (implying a future scarcity of food) show our world can’t. And rapid population growth (did we add a billion people in just 15 years?) means there are too many women with a lack of education and a lack of family planning – generally unempowered. There is also the problem that the population growth is mostly in poorer countries while the countries with declining population have much higher rates of consumption and environmental damage. Today marks the 15th anniversary of when I started publishing this blog. This is post 4979. There have been almost 340,000 page views since the system has been keeping track starting in June 2010. By the time I started posting I had already spent three years writing up LGBTQ news alerts to send to family and friends. That was prompted by the first same-sex marriages in Massachusetts.

A military wins or falls on the strength of its logistics

My Sunday movie was Young Royals on Netflix, season 2, episodes 1 and 2. I had finished season 1 back in April and season 2 was released a couple weeks ago. This is the story of Wilhelm, prince of Sweden who falls in love with Simon, a commoner. Part of this story is revenge for the betrayal that happened at the end of season 1. Wilhelm and Simon are trying to recover from it. And Wilhelm, though acting like a teenager, is beginning to stand up to his mother the queen. In thinking about episode 2 I realized something that surprised me. Wilhelm, Simon, and August are all on the rowing team. The surprise is there is no adult coach. One of the senior members puts the others through their training paces. And, by a vote of the others, can be replaced. Yes, that’s a factor in the story. The series is filmed in Sweden and this American version is dubbed in English. As I noted for season 1 it can be jarring to see the lips not in sync with the English I hear. And that seems to be more pronounced this time. Simon is a decent singer and his songs are in Swedish as are his words when he speaks to his mother. That makes me think the actors on screen also did the English dubbing – and mostly without accents. The Netflix credits show other names for the versions in other languages. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine was a couple days old Kos of Daily Kos has said several times a country’s military wins or falls on the strength of its logistics and Russian logistics are sorely lacking. That is again true for the liberation of Kherson, though this time Ukraine helped. Ukraine damaged the bridges across the Dnipro River, they lobbed rockets at every Russian command center and supply depot, and they attacked the Kerch bridge that supplies Crimea (the bridge’s rail line is still out). Ukraine also declared the liberation of Kherson was next. The prompted Russia to shift troops to the region, leaving the Kharkiv region with too little defense and allowing Ukraine to sweep through. But by then Russia didn’t have a way to sufficiently supply all those troops it had shifted to Kherson. Catherine Cortez Masto has been declared the winner in the Nevada race for senator. She keeps her seat and Democrats now have 50 seats. Yet to come is the Georgia runoff which, if Warnock is reelected, will lessen the power Sen. Joe Manchin has over the Democrat’s agenda. Aldous Pennyfarthing of Kos discussed an article in the Washington Post that says Democratic operatives goaded the nasty guy to help nominate Republican candidates that were more easily defeated. One way they did this was to hint the better candidate had criticized the nasty guy. He then endorsed the primary opponent. Bill in Portland, Maine, in a Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, quoted late night commentary. Here’s one entry.

It’s Day One following the 2022 midterm elections. While the GOP did make modest gains, the massive victory they predicted never materialized. This morning's headlines said it best: 'The vaunted red wave never hit the shore in midterm elections' … 'That's not a red wave' ... and 'The red wave was more like a pink splash.' Yes—a pink splash. It was a salmon drizzle. A rosy wash that's like what happens when you accidentally wash your Klan robes with your MAGA hat. —Stephen Colbert

Why wasn’t the final tally 99% to 1%?

In a Ukraine update from this morning Mark Sumner of Daily Kos reported some more about the liberation of Kherson. The jubilation shown in many videos (and he includes some) shows the lie that these people wanted to be part of Russia. There’s also an elderly woman giving Ukrainian soldiers an ammo belt. Don’t mess with her! It appears Russians were storing ammo in or near private homes. Now that Russia is out of Kherson (though just across the river) it had to move its regional administration to a new place. They chose Henichesk and the only advantage this small town has is its distance from Ukrainian held territory. Laura Clawson of Kos reported Massachusetts voters passed, 52% to 48%, a tax of an additional 4% on income over $1 million. Yeah, we get why super rich dudes donated $1 million to defeat the amendment. Though ...

The ability to contribute $1 million to [defeat] an effort to tax the wealthy seems like evidence that the wealthy should be taxed more.

We also understand why 0.6% of the earners who would be taxed more would want to donate to defeat such a measure, but why did 48% of voters vote against it? Nearly all of them won’t be affected by the tax. Why wasn’t the final tally 99% to 1%? Clawson pulls apart the reasons. There is the claim that if the rich are taxed more they’ll just move elsewhere. But research done after such laws are passed in other states shows that rarely happens. Others say selling your house could result in an unexpected tax bill. Yeah, it could – if your capital gains on the house, after all the improvements are deducted, was over $1 million. Clawson mentioned an old chestnut, tweeted by Son of the South:

Hell no, it also taxes small business owners, farmers and fishermen. That’s a sure fire way to increase our food costs, materials and home heating oil.

Clawson replied:

Let me fix that for you: “Small business owners making more than $1 million of personal income a year, farmers making more than $1 million a year, and fishermen making more than $1 million a year.”

I and my brother have done a lot of genealogy work over the last few years, expanding on the research our parents had done. As part of that work I joined WikiTree, a free site for building a community ancestral tree that emphasizes finding sources to verify what a profile shows. I’ve been able to link up my own family to work others have done. I get a report emailed to me nearly every day showing what others have contributed for people with the same family names as my ancestors. I’ve also asked questions of the community of users and they are pleased to share what they know. One of those community questions was more of a comment. The user included the text of a petition to the Virginia Legislature presented by a free man of color in 1834. As a free man of color he wasn’t allowed to stay in Virginia. He asks the legislature to be allowed to stay until he earned enough money to buy the freedom of his wife and two children. This user commented that such suffering on a personal level makes him sad and angry. Various community responses agreed it is sad and depressing. But such stories need to be told. We can’t let these stories be covered up. And in this case we need to see the profound courage of a man confronting lawmakers to save his family. Descendants of slaves need to know their family history. The rest of us need to know that history too, even those of us whose only family trauma was the death of an infant during the Atlantic crossing or running aground in sight of land off the Virginia coast. I’m pleased WikiTree is doing what it can to help those stories be told. An example is starting a list of Southern plantations to provide a place to group plantation records. This is another higher level of family history I haven’t had to deal with. I’m glad I saw this discussion. Here is a link to that community comment and its discussion. I doubt you will be able to see it if you aren’t a member of WikiTree.

The last order was change into civilian clothing and run

In yesterday’s post I wrote that Russia ordered a withdrawal from the Kherson region on the northwest side of the Dnipro River. I also wrote that Russia had 30K-50K soldiers there and it would take weeks to move them all out. As for that last bit ... In a report from yesterday morning Mark Sumner of Daily Kos wrote that with the sunrise he was getting confirmation of a lot of Ukrainian villages being liberated. And some of that came with an acknowledgment that liberation had come two days before. Sumner posted a few videos of villagers greeting the liberators.

Meanwhile in Kherson city, Russian forces have stopped any attempt to evacuate civilians. Why? Because of a reported “lack of interest.” In other words, with liberation on their doorstep and the quislings already gone, no one in Kherson wants to leave. They want to be there to welcome the Ukrainian troops, as they welcome Kherson home.

In a report from yesterday evening (with updates into the night) Sumner wrote that confirmation of liberated villages was coming in so quickly it was hard for him to keep up. In a map showing occupied territory he shifted this whole region to “disputed.” He used that designation only because he didn’t have confirmation of most places. And overnight Ukrainian forces were still advancing under the light of a moon just past full. At this point there may still be 20K Russian troops. That means Ukraine may be about to receive one of the largest surrenders in history. Ukraine is also about to receive a huge gift in military equipment. War Monitor tweeted:

Russian paratrooper on his last order in Kherson region "The last order was change into civilian clothing and run in any direction you wanted"

In this morning’s post Sumner reported the city of Kherson has been liberated. There are lots of videos of residents greeting the liberators and dancing in the streets. Even a video of a fresh delivery to a supermarket chain.

But really, this morning isn’t about what happened to those Russian forces. It’s all about the victory of Ukrainian forces, and that victory is special in so many ways. As the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense made sure to point out this morning, their forces are not walking into a ruin. They’re not reaching a city center pulverized into rubble the way that Russia did when they captured Mariupol or so many other locations. Kherson is largely intact. Tens of thousands of citizens remain there, cheering on the approaching Ukrainian force. That’s because Ukraine fought the battle of Kherson in a smart way, choking off Russian supply routes, keeping up pressure to force Russian troops to expend their ammo and strain their equipment, bringing things to the point where Russia had no choice but to leave the city.

As has happened in other places Russia occupied there is evidence of war crimes. One of the places likely to have lots of horrors is Beryslav, where Russia had established a “filtration camp” – what had been called a concentration camp in the last big war. Sumner has one last map of the region. All of the land northwest of the Dnipro River is now shaded blue. Since Kherson was the one regional capital that Russia had captured and Putin had declared the Kherson region to be part of Russia forever, its liberation is is important and wonderful news. Of course, the war isn’t over. The southeast side of the river is still red. What I found worth mentioning in today’s pundit roundup, posted by Greg Dworkin of Kos, isn’t so much the pundits as the political cartoons posted by Denise Oliver Velez in the comments. A bunch of them off the top are about how tiny the predicted election Red Wave was. There is one of a hand coming out of a red sleeve trying to wave the nasty guy off the stage. Commenter Tangento wrote about the Republican Party having a lack of vision for the country as a whole. Tangento simplified their vision as “The Republican Compass” where the compass points are greed, hate, bigotry, xenophobia, corruption, hypocrisy, treason, and domestic terrorism all wrapped in projection. Tangento then included a list from The American Prospect titled “The ‘Center’ of American Politics is on the ‘Left.’” There are a dozen items in the list. Some of them are:

76% of all Americans favor higher taxes on the super-rich. 92% want lower prescription drug prices. 80% want paid maternity leave. 80% of Republicans want more affordable child care. 62% think climate change is man-made and needs addressing. 84% think money has too much influence in politics.

I followed the link at the bottom of the list to an article on The American Prospect website written by Robert Reich in 2019. He lists the whole dozen items with links to the appropriate poll. Then he concluded:

So why do the powerful call these policy ideas “fringe,” or “radical,” or “socialist?” Money. Many of these initiatives would cost them—requiring either higher taxes on the rich (many could be achieved by repealing the giant Trump tax cut for the wealthy and corporations), or regulations that might cut into their corporate profits. So you can bet that as these proposals become even more popular, the powerful are going to intensify their attacks. But just remember: the “center” is not halfway between what most Americans want and what big corporations, Wall Street, and the super-wealthy want. The “center” is what the vast majority of Americans want.

I’ve accumulated a bunch of browser tabs over the last two weeks about Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter. Back on October 28 Leah McElrath tweeted about Musk’s promise to remove controls. That prompted a flood of people using the n-word.

I have never seen /pol on 4chan move as fast as it is now. People who do this kind of trolling are very activated. I’d expect the activity to settle down after a while, but they’re extremely excited to be able to use abusive language, bless their hearts.

Michael Harriot tweeted a sarcastic thread about changes in Twitter’s policy. A few of his entries:

We have streamlined the process to report violations of our safety policy. To notify our staff about any threat of violence, abuse, hateful conduct or offensive language, the user only has to answer one question: "Did you die, tho?" ... No insurrection-planning allowed* *Unless you REALLY want to. It's not like we're gonna check ... Because we believe in free speech, Musky Twitter will no longer censor racist tweets. However, tweets referring to racism, white supremacy, or placing the word "white" next to the word "people" will automatically be flagged as hate speech. No Tesla slander will be allowed

On October 31 Darrell Lucas of the Kos community discussed Musk’s desire to loosen moderation, to let the bird be free. However, since Musk bought Twitter using $25.5 billion in loans (and I heard must pay a billion a year in interest payments) that will constrain him. More accurately, he will be constrained by the need to keep advertiser dollars flowing. Even so, many advertisers have paused. McElrath tweeted that putting Twitter behind a paywall makes it seem like the new company leadership doesn’t understand the platform at all. Elise Salomon replied:

they do understand it, which is why they know how to destroy it it's a place where activists organize it's a place where we've been able to hold the powerful accountable it's a piece of our culture and how we stay connected and as long as it's functioning, it is in their way

On November 4 Laura Clawson of Kos wrote about Musk laying off about half of Twitter’s workforce, losing a great deal of institutional knowledge. He also did it in an illegal manner – mass layoffs need 60 days notice. So there are lawsuits. Musk also whined about activists pressuring advertisers to pull out. Clawson wrote:

Awww, someone made his bed and is unhappy lying in it. Multiple companies have confirmed that they are pausing their Twitter advertising while they wait to see where things go. But activist pressure takes time to build and this happened almost immediately, pointing to other causes. Like, say, the flood of racist slurs that swept over Twitter as soon as Musk took control of the company. Or the plan to replace a blue-check system that let users know they were reading tweets from verified public figures or journalists with one that lets users know they are reading tweets from people willing to pay Elon Musk a monthly fee. Or the mass layoffs that erode confidence that the site will be secure. ... If nothing else, at least we probably won’t have to hear so much hype about the brilliance of Elon Musk from now on.

On November 9 Hunter of Kos wrote:

Hours after Elon Musk's Twitter rolled out his new demanded feature allowing anyone to get "verified" status on the social network by paying $8 per month, the feature is already resulting in the fraudulent impersonation of companies and individuals. And that's exactly what everyone on the planet predicted would happen, so we can presume it was indeed Musk's intention. Garbage fire, meet chemical fire. It'll only take $8 now to make a mush of whatever you want to. And there aren't, to anyone's knowledge, any safeguards to keep it from happening.

Hunter then had examples of rude spoofs of Nintendo, LeBron James, and the nasty guy.

Musk still doesn't have a plan, and when Twitter does come up with a plan to protect users, Musk condemns it, then kills it. Chaos, and lawsuits, are coming. And Elon Musk is about to lose even more money than anyone thought he might.

On November 10 Hunter wrote:

The cynics who've speculated that Elon Musk may have spent $44 billion on Twitter only so that he could destroy the company he's long had contempt for aren't exactly hard-up for evidence, at this point. As implausible as it seems to suggest that Musk might be willing to burn tens of billions of dollars to spite those who've publicly criticized him, the thought that Musk really believes his chain of utterly incompetent management decisions would do anything other than wreck the company seems almost as unlikely. Advertisers are running. Other companies are warning Twitter-prominent employees to avoid advertising their accounts, but also to avoid deleting them so as to thwart new scammers. And Elon? He’s siding with the scams, and laughing about it. Yes, things are going to hell in a handbasket very quickly, and Musk may have found a way to lose even more than $44 billion on his new hobby. That's because Musk's new policies have opened the door to fraud, impersonation, and identity theft. Now top Twitter executives are (again) resigning rather than face the legal liabilities Musk is forcing onto himself and his company. ... What's the big risk, for Twitter? At present, it's that the company appears to have chosen a path that allows them to monetize fraud. With the launch of Musk's new $8-for-verification scheme, the company is allowing credible impersonations of Twitter users famous and not. It's already turned into chaos; there are many people willing to throw $8 into a burner Twitter account that impersonates international companies, sports figures, or anyone else they don't happen to like.

Advertisers won’t go back because brand safety is now gone and companies are figuring out how to protect themselves. A bit of election news... Aysha Qamar of Kos reported Maxwell Alejandro Frost of Florida has become the first member of the House from Gen Z. He is now 25 and the minimum age to run for Congress. He has been an activist since age 15, notably through March for Our Lives. His reason for becoming an activist at such a young age: “Because I didn’t want to get shot at school.” David Nir of Kos Elections reported that Lauren Boebert, a very noisy far right member of the House, is in a race that is still too close to call. Colorado votes entirely by mail. If there is a problem with a ballot, such as a signature not matching, the voter has a chance to “cure” it. So the Colorado Democratic Party is in a massive effort to find likely Democratic voters who need to correct their ballots. There is a problem – that district is 50,000 square miles of the mountainous western side of the state and they have only until November 16th to do it. Joan McCarter of Kos wrote that in 2022 abortion rights have been on the ballot in six states and have won in all six. That’s Kansas, Kentucky, Montana, Michigan, California, and Vermont. So activists are going to the other red states that can put citizen proposals on the ballot to get abortion rights passed there too.

Nothing they hate more than empathy

Four years ago I knocked on doors and did explainer sessions to help get an amendment passed to the Michigan constitution to put redistricting into the hands of a citizens commission. This week’s election showed that effort paid off. The Michigan House is to be in Democrat hands for the first time in more than a decade. The Michigan Senate will have a Democrat majority (12 women and 8 men) for the first time in nearly four decades. Yeah, the margin is one seat above tied in both chambers. I’ll take it. Add to that the Dem Governor, the Dem Secretary of State, and the Dem Attorney General were all reelected. The state Supreme Court keeps its majority of justices nominated by Democrats, reinstalling two incumbents, though one of those was nominated by Republicans. And our delegation to Congress is 7 Dem, 6 GOP with one notable shift in a district on the conservative Western side of the state. Peter Meijer, Republican, had held the seat and had voted to impeach the nasty guy. He lost the primary and that guy, a 2020 election denier, lost to Hillary Scholten, a woman Democrat. Michigan Advance reported Democrats have already elected their leadership for the next term – a woman to lead the Senate and a black man to lead the House, firsts for both. The redistricting went so well that a few Democrats running for Congress actually had to campaign hard, though they won. Also, a proposal to amend the constitution to loosen term limits to allow members of the legislature to serve 12 years in one chamber with a requirement of financial disclosure passed. A proposal to put more voting rights into the constitution passed. A proposal to put abortion rights into the constitution (and overturn a 1931 ban) passed. In Michigan it was a very good election. And delightfully, very little drama from election deniers and sore losers. Now we wait for results at the federal level. Though control of both chambers is still unknown at least we know this won’t be a “shellacking” that Obama experienced in 2010. Laura Clawson of Daily Kos in a post from Wednesday morning quoted several tweets of races of national importance. That included a measure in Oregon that requires a firearms safety course and other restrictions to buying a gun. It passed. John Fetterman won the Pennsylvania senate seat. Joan McCarter of Kos reported a proposal to ban abortion in Kentucky failed! So did one in Montana! Kos of Kos noted several Democrat talking heads said Dem candidates should talk about the economy and not talk about democracy being at stake. They should not talk about abortion. Yeah, they were wrong. Talking about abortion and democracy carried many Democrats to victory. They also talked about the economy. Greg Dworkin, in a pundit roundup for Kos, also included results from around the country. He also quoted a few voices that said Red Wave? Didn’t happen. And a lot of candidates endorsed by the nasty guy lost – especially in Michigan. Dworkin included a tweet from Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux who reported that in exit polls in Michigan half of the voters said abortion was the top issue. Chitown Kev, in another pundit roundup for Kos, quoted Matthew Chapman:

Democrats have created FOUR new state Democratic trifectas this year: Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, and Minnesota. Even if Sisolak doesn't make it and they lose the trifecta in Nevada, that's a net gain of three.

Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, included a clip from the Daily Show of a woman doing exit polling – not who did you vote for, but was the “EXIT” sign easy to see? My brother suggested I read the Kos Good News Roundup for this morning. He said I would appreciate what author Mokurai of the Kos community wrote because I say many of the same things in this blog.

There is nothing the Wrong-Wingers hate more than empathy. Inequality is to them the highest social good, as it is to all full-on authoritarians. Empathy includes wokeness, real history, and wanting the best of everything for everybody, even for those who would refuse it all because Those People/the rest of us will at last start to get their/our fair share. Have I mentioned that before? Well, repetition is good, and more repetition is better. Empathy was on the ballot on Tuesday, along with Democracy, motherhood, equality, and truth. Apple pie is apparently still OK

. Below more election news were a couple more items of interest. Mokurai quoted a tweet from Assaad Razzouk about an idea I’ve mentioned a couple times:

France just legislated that every parking lot for 80 cars or more must be covered by solar panels That’s 11GW of new solar (same as 10 new nuclear reactors) powering millions of home - zero new land needed Climate action is happening, just not at #COP27

And a tweet from Mike Hudema:

In 3 yrs this #solar installation at a high school in Arkansas turned the district budget from a $250K deficit to a $1.8 million surplus. They're using the surplus to increase teacher salaries.

The video in the tweet shows sidewalks shaded by solar panels and panels in otherwise vacant fields. This school isn’t the only one that is solar powered. Many are joining the trend, and they’re frequently pushed to it by students. Marissa Higgins of Kos reported Republicans in Tennessee, perhaps in retaliation to their missing red wave, introduced a bill to criminalize drag shows. It is both broad and vague, so it could be used to ban Drag Queen Story Hour. And could criminalize being trans, as in, “Well, this person says they’re trans, but they’re really just an impersonator trying to get into the bathroom for some evil purpose.” In a Ukraine update Mark Sumner of Kos reported that according to Russian state media, “Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu has ordered a withdrawal of all Russian forces from the west bank of the Dnipro River in Kherson region.” There are reports that many towns no longer have a Russian presence. Some of the small towns are under Ukrainian control, though the status of many more is not confirmed. In a second report Sumner wrote that the Ukraine Ministry of Defense estimates there are 30K – 50K Russian soldiers in the Kherson region. This is an enormous force. It will take weeks to move them all out. And Putin has not yet officially said anything about the order to withdraw. So don’t assume Ukraine soldiers will soon walk right in to Kherson. There’s still some fighting to be done.