Bandaid on the fin

Mark Sumner of Daily Kos reported on another sign of the demise of coal. The United Mine Workers of America used to have 800,000 members. It now has 80,000, though fewer than 20,000 actually work in mines. The entire coal industry has only about 43,600 workers, including management and office workers. The sign that Sumner reported is that in a recent online speech Cecil Roberts, president of the union, wasn’t concerned about keeping miners in mines, but how to transition them to new jobs. He also introduced a plan for “preserving coal country” that includes plugging old oil and gas well, cleaning up abandoned mines, and expanding renewable energy. Since Roberts had worked with Biden there’s a good chance Biden will listen. The decline in coal began in 2008 with the rise of fracking to get cheaper natural gas. The decline strengthened when the cost of installing wind and solar became cheaper than maintaining a coal plant. As for the carbon capture technology to create “clean” coal, it has never worked, would be hugely expensive to try which would make to cost differential worse for coal, and would now be pointless. After many police shootings we find out that evidence released later shows that the first statements by police were lies. Things like that prompted Michael Harriot to tweet:

There’s been a lot of conversations about cops lying in police reports and very little about all the white editors & writers who regard police reports as “objective” sources.

The House passed a bill to give statehood to Washington DC! I saw the name is to become Washington, Commonwealth of Douglass (as in Frederick Douglass). The bill’s progress in the Senate may depend on whether the filibuster is eliminated. In the meantime people have been pondering what an American flag with 51 stars might look like. Here are a few designs, some with big changes from what we have now, though keeping the red and white stripes and stars on a field of blue. One of the patterns of stars certainly looks like a dinosaur... Olayemi Olurin tweeted:

Explain to me why elected officials get on twitter and pretend to be just as helpless as you and I. We don’t all have the power to change the system, that’s frustrating. What’s more frustrating is watching the people we gave the power to change the system pretending they can’t.

Several times I’ve mentioned my doubts about Speaker Nancy Pelosi. She talks a good line but appears to do little to secure democracy, such as limiting the scope of impeachment trials. Here is another reason to doubt her. On the news that Pelosi won’t pursue a submitted bill to expand the Supreme Court, Peter Daou tweeted:

PELOSI EXCUSED BUSH'S WAR CRIMES PELOSI GAVE TRUMP'S THUGS A PASS PELOSI BLOCKED MEDICARE FOR ALL PELOSI IS BLOCKING EXPANDING SCOTUS Notice a pattern? To every Pelosi defender blaming Manchin or some other empty procedural excuse, you're being played by Dems. If they wanted to do something, they'd find a way to do it with their majorities. Pretending they can't is just insulting our intelligence.

WCBS Newsradio announced a new vaccine site will be underneath the blue whale in the American Museum of Natural History. The tweet included a photo of the whale. That prompted Alyssa Franke to exclaim:

He!!! Has!!! A Bandaid!!!! ON HIS FIN!!!!

Tevye of the Kos community told a story that began 20 years ago. Danny Stewart, about to leave a New York subway station, discovered an abandoned baby boy. He and his partner Pete Mercurio were asked by the judge if they were willing to adopt him. They did, with the judge expediting the process. Kevin became their son. In 2011 same-sex marriage became legal in New York. Pete and Danny asked the same judge to officiate. She was delighted to do so. Last fall Pete published a children’s book Our Subway Baby. Kevin is now 20 and considers himself lucky and well loved. Leah McElrath tweeted something important considering the state of the world:

I want you to know you don’t always have to be strong. I want you to know sometimes you won’t be strong enough. I want you to know the world might break you. I want you to know you deserve love even when broken. I want you to know the expectation of resilience is oppression.