Overwhelmingly wealthy, overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly men

Overwhelmingly wealthy, overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly men As I’ve been doing for nearly 20 months I downloaded Michigan’s COVID data today. After a peak of 27,739 new cases in one day back at the beginning of January, the last few peaks have been 12,899, 9839, 4020, and 2629. Good news indeed! The last time weekly peaks were this low was back in August in the early part of the delta rise. Deaths per day for the second week of February are in the 39-53 range. I watched the Olympic pairs figure skating short program last evening and the free program tonight. It has much less drama surrounding it than the women’s competition. One of the USA pairs teams is Ashley Cain-Gribble and Timothy LeDuc. They ended the short program in 7th place, a tenth of a point from 6th – but ten points from the leaders. This team is of interest for another reason – Timothy is the first openly non binary athlete at the Olympics. NBC even included a shot of Tim’s boyfriend cheering at home. After the free program Cain-Gribble and LeDuc finished 8th. The Chinese pair won by 0.6 points, which led to a lot of jubilation because the lost the gold four years ago by a half-point. For more background on the messy women’s figure skating Scott Simon of NPR spoke to Polina Edmunds who competed in the same event in 2014 and now is host of a figure skating podcast. Some of what they talked about: The center of this media circus should not be the 15 year old athlete. It should be her coaching team. Back when Edmunds competed judges were looking for both the technical and artistry, something a woman, not a child, could bring. Just eight years later the focus is on the technical and things, such as quad jumps, a girl can do and a woman cannot. What we have now is a jumping contest. The way out of this is to return the artistic score to actually mean artistry – intricate choreography and actual emotion displayed by the skater. Current competitors can demand change. As for Kamila Valieva, the adults around her need to see her as a human, not a vessel for medals. If Edmunds could talk to her Edmunds would say get yourself into long term therapy. Valieva has been through way too much negative attention for anyone to handle, especially someone so young. Kos of Daily Kos commented on the situation in Ukraine, in which he believes Putin has put himself in a no-win situation. Some of the things he discussed: If one looks at Russia from the North Pole NATO is on two sides – Europe to the west and USA and Canada to the north. That explains some of Russia’s paranoia. Some more is explained by Ukraine’s size. It is the second largest country in Europe (Russia is the largest – and Turkey is mostly in Asia). I checked a couple of comparison sites. One shows Ukraine a bit smaller than Texas. Another shows Ukraine extending from New York to west of Chicago. In the ranking of the 48 European countries by GDP, Russia is 46, Belarus is 47, and Ukraine is 48. Other former Soviet states: Romania is 10th, Poland 13th, Armenia 15th, Hungary 18th, and Georgia 20th. Russia doesn’t do responsible economic stewardship. It’s client states do worse. If this was really about NATO expansion it could easily be handled by treaty. The treaty could cover things like not placing missiles aimed at Moscow in Ukraine or using NATO membership to recover Donbas and Crimea. This is about wounded pride and the only way to handle that through diplomacy is to acquiesce to Putin’s ridiculous demands. I believe more this isn’t about pride. Rather it is about Putin not wanting a big democracy as its neighbor. Might give the natives ideas. Ukraine has significantly improved its military since Russia took Crimea eight years ago. Finland and Sweden have been neutral – they haven’t joined NATO. But they’re in talks now – as in hey, Russia, don’t make us do this. Putin’s actions may strengthen and expand NATO. Russia’s economy is not in good shape – see the ranking of 46th above. A war would make the economy worse. Also, because of the already poor economy Russian public opinion has been turning against Putin. And a war (plus all that corruption) will discourage investors. I learned the harsh Russian winter defeated Napoleon in 1812 (which Tchaikovsky depicted in his 1812 Overture). So why would people think Russia would want to launch an invasion in winter? The answer is that tanks do better on frozen ground than in spring mud. If Putin withdrew could he go to the Kremlin and say “I tried but they refused by demands”? Doubtful. Russian leaders who show weakness don’t fare well. Biden has offered Putin a way out – a new nuclear arms treaty. So far Putin has refused. Another way out is Putin simply declares Russia is still a superpower. It’s now up to Putin. Mark Sumner of Kos reported the nasty guy is trying to sell his lease to the Trump Hotel in Washington. He wants to get $375 million for it. Since this was a way for other countries to slip him a bribe, does selling the lease mean he isn’t running in 2024? The nasty guy’s accounting firm has said their numbers cannot be relied upon. The General Services Administration owns the building (it is a historical government building) the nasty guy is leasing. Because of the unreliable numbers the House Oversight Committee has asked the GSA to terminate the lease. Which means the nasty guy would have nothing to sell. Too bad. Somebody released a report that again cleared Hillary Clinton of any wrongdoing. Of course, the conservative squawk machine is cranking up. Laura Clawson of Kos reported Clinton herself had a few things to say.

It’s funny, the more trouble Trump gets into, the wilder the charges and conspiracy theories about me seem to get. ... So now his accountants have fired [Trump] and investigations draw closer to him and right on cue, the noise machine gets turned up. Fox leads the charge with accusations against me, counting on their audience to fall for it again. And as an aside, they're getting awfully close to actual malice.

“Actual malice” is a legal term that sets a standard for when public figures can win libel cases. Fox News dismissed the idea by saying it’s not malice, it’s news. As for the claim the Capitol attack was “legitimate public discourse” Clinton said:

When the Republican Party officially embraces violent insurrection as legitimate political discourse. When storming the Capitol, assaulting police officers, trying to overturn an election, are being normalized, we are in uncharted territory. And make no mistake, our adversaries around the world are watching. Republicans are defending coup-plotters, they're curbing voting rights at precisely the moment when democracy needs champions, when we should be standing together against autocracies like Russia and China.

Clawson concluded:

Clinton’s specific take on Trump and her take on the Republican Party tie together: The Republican embrace of lawlessness is so broad and so deep that it needs to create people like Clinton as villains at the head of vast conspiracy theories to distract from its own sordid realities.

No surprise here. Republicans plus Joe Manchin opposed the extension of the expanded child tax credit. It expired in December. Clawson reported in January the rate of child poverty went up by 41%. Clawson wrote:

That’s 3.7 million more children in poverty, with Latino and Black children hit the hardest, according to the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University. Everyone knows how to keep those kids out of poverty because the United States government did it for six months, and then, thanks to a small number of people—overwhelmingly wealthy, overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly men—3.7 million children were made poor in the space of a month. ... It’s on the consciences of those senators. The ones who have consciences.