Politics and Fire

Well!  Today's headline was shocking.  The criminal investigation unit of the USPS arrested Steve Bannon for taking money that was donated to build that stupid wall on the border.  Three other people were arrested, as well.  I don't know if the USPS rounded them up or if SDNY went and got them.  Bannon is out on $5M bail.  Couldn't happen to a nicer guy.  The orange wombat is already distancing himself, by next week he'll be saying he never met him.

The wombat gave a speech in Pennsylvania today, hoping to steal the thunder from Biden's nomination tonight.  Pictures of the audience did not reveal all that many people in attendance.  The wombat went on and on about how if Biden wins, he's going to "cancel" America, children will be raised to turn on their parents, cities will go up in flames, there will be no water coming out of the shower heads,  light bulbs will make people look orange and etc.  But this - this takes the cake for a weird statement.

I found this on twitter today,  this accurately sums up the year thus far.  The wombat has already been heard to say he's not going to give California any relief money because they don't like him, and also because they "have not been raking their forests."

This photo of a fire tornado has been around for a couple of days.  It's an amazing and terrifying image.

There was an interview with a postal worker who explained why drugs are running so late.  The current priority is Amazon packages, then priority mail, and then everything else.  Drugs don't use expensive postage, so they get left on the floor.  Apparently, so do the baby chicks and Omaha steaks.  It was reported that a post office in California is full of dead animals and rotting food.  Maine has also reported that their chicks are arriving dead, which is causing them heart break and economic hardship.

Meanwhile, that rat bastard DeJoy has ordered all post offices not to plug in or reassemble any of the sorting machines that are still on site.  He has no plans to approve overtime or add back sorting capacity.  Vice has an article on the subject here.   People are still reporting the removal of blue mail boxes, this guy hasn't stopped doing anything, even though he said he would.

Remember the no-bid contract that was given to a HHS contractor to develop a database that would do what the CDC database had been doing for years?  The one that tracked how many hospital beds were full/available?  That would be the contract that the developers would not discuss because they had signed a non-disclosure agreement with HHS. They're not going to complete the task.   At least it was only $10M that was flushed down the toilet.  What is not clear is what happens next.  Daily Kos has an interesting take on the subject which I have excerpted below. (Highlighting is mine.)

... quoting the Wall Street Journal, Dr. Deborah Birx is now saying the “CDC is working with us right now to build a revolutionary new data system so it can be moved back to the CDC, and they can have that regular accountability with hospitals relevant to treatment and PPE.” She is further quoted as saying that the move to send all collected Covid data to the private firm TeleTracking was meant to be solely an interim system.

Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. This announcement by Birx attempts to do several things, none of them good.

--It raises expectations that CDC will be getting the data again, but does not really commit to setting a timeline for that to happen. “Working with us right now to build a revolutionary system” is so vague as to be meaningless. And why couldn’t CDC have continued receiving Covid data while continuing to work on this spanking shiny new pie-in-the-sky system?

--Why would Teletracking receive a $10million+ contract for being solely an interim system? Especially since Teletracking would have to exponentially grow their own systems to handle all the Covid data?

--Why was no one told that Teletracking was an interim solution to a non-existent problem? The move to TeleTracking was announced 48 hours in advance, forcing hospitals to scramble. This supposed move back to CDC is catching everyone off guard.

So, this will be interesting.  The other thing that is not currently being well tracked is case loads in schools.  How are people supposed to know how bad things are in the schools if no one is writing it down?

We rode this morning, it was really hot because it was really humid.  It's not Texas caliber humid, but it's enough.  Currently we're under a blowing dust warning due to out flow of air from the thunderstorms that are not going to give us any rain.  It's all south of us.  Anyway, the days are shorter and the light stays nice just a little bit longer than in late June.

So that's it.  Malfeasance and perfidy on the part of the Republicans and the wombat runs rampant.  Covid is still with us and the grocery store remains our main source of entertainment and a change of scenery.