D-Day Anniversary

Today is the 76th anniversary of the Normandy Invasion, when the Allies landed on Normandy to remove the stain of the Fascist Hitler.

Today we see this on the orange man's campaign website.  This person is such a tool, it hurts me.

The presence of all of these men with all of those guns and no identifying badges or patches in DC has raised the hackles of many people, including me.  How does one know if they're actual official gun carrying people, or are they the Proud Boys doing cosplay?  I give you this photo.  Who are these people?  The current theory is that they're Bureau of Prisons people.  They're trained to put down riots in prison.  Exactly what one wants at a protest with civilians.

Politico did a very interesting article on just how many armed people are employed by the federal government.  It's a staggering number.  I will excerpt from the article now.

To understand the police forces ringing Trump and the White House it helps to understand the dense and not-entirely-sensical thicket of agencies that make up the nation’s civilian federal law enforcement. With little public attention, notice and amid historically lax oversight, those ranks have surged since 9/11—growing by roughly 2,500 officers annually every year since 2000. To put it another way: Every year since the 2001 terrorist attacks, the federal government has added to its policing ranks a force larger than the entire Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. 

The public has little understanding or appreciation for the size of some of these agencies, each of which has its own protocols, training, hiring guidelines and responsibilities. On the lighter side, few tourists know, for instance, that the National Gallery of Art—home to some of the world’s most famous artwork—has a shooting range for its police tucked away above its soaring central rotunda. On the darker side, the roughly 20,000 federal prison guards known formally as the Bureau of Prisons—whose riot units make up a sizable chunk of the officers imported to D.C. and who represent the single largest component of federal officers in the Justice Department—are concerning to see on the streets in part because they’re largely untrained in civilian law enforcement; they normally operate in a controlled environment behind bars with sharply limited civil liberties and use-of-force policies that would never fly in a civilian environment. 

 And then there is this:

The list of crimes these agents and officers collectively enforce is endless, so much that a tongue-in-cheek Twitter feed daily shares the most obscure federal criminal penalties. One of this week’s examples: “21 USC §331, 333, 343 & 21 CFR §150.160(b)(2) make it a federal crime to sell jam made from a combination of more than five fruits.”

In news of Covid-19 we have this headline in a Phoenix paper. 

Banner says ICU beds are approaching 100% capacity

Banner is the biggest healthcare network in AZ.  They came in and bought everything, including the UofA medical school hospital.  They're everywhere.  Anyway, the article is sort of misleading, because hospitals can increase capacity by 25% by building temporary ICUs, but it's still pretty creepy.  Cases are up, as well, but our illustrious governor says it's due to increased testing and not because the state is wide open.  We can eat in restaurants now, and go to bars.  Not that we would.  We contemplated going to a cactus nursery today because we are so bored, but the thought of going on a weekend was too dire for me.

Look, you can see the new mural from space.  Pretty cool.

Poor Ivanka has been cancelled.  Poor her.

There was almost a sunset last night.  Not quite.  It did cool down, it was 71 degrees when I left on my bike this morning, it was almost chilly.  Not to worry, back to 105 by Wednesday.  Yay!