A Walk and More Complaining

It's warm!  It's abnormally warm for February.  This is a screen shot of my phone weather screen.  One wonders if winter is over for good. 

Today we went to Walmart.  I do believe we'll be shopping there more, as much as it offends my sense of how employees should be treated.  We got supplies for painting, and I got a pair of cotton shorts so I can sit in the dirt.  As I have mentioned, when I packed I spaced out yard work.  Anyway, they're lovely shorts from the men's department, so they have pockets (!) and they were $10.  I've given up on clothes for women, no pockets.  

Coming back we saw this.  It's going to be a new neighborhood.  The birth rate is declining, where are all of these people coming from?  I don't get it.  They are hard at work, scraping the desert.

After Walmart we went for a restorative walk in the desert.  It's bleak out there, it needs rain.  The Cactus Wrens have not been his friend.  They make holes for nests, allowing fluids to leak out.

So, what horrible things happened today.

Marco Rubio, Secretary of State, met with the leader of El Salvador who graciously agreed to take US citizens and put them in his 40,000 person jail.  Most of them are gang members and are very bad people.  It's unlikely that our criminals would last long there.  So, deporting citizens to save jail space.  Article is here.

47 is planning to sign an executive order to dismantle the Department of Education.  What could go wrong?  Do we really need an educated work force and electorate?

From Jared Ryan Sears on twtter:
For anyone about to claim that Trump accomplished something with his tariff threats: 
-Mexico put 10,000 troops at the border under Biden without the threat of tariffs.
-Canada already announced $1.3 billion for enhanced border security before Trump took office.
Trump caused confusion, a major drop in stock markets, and destroyed our relationship with other nations to gain absolutely nothing. And if tariffs were so amazing that they would make America rich and lower taxes, what is the plan to solve America's debt now that Trump has abandoned tariffs? It is all a show to mask Trump's ineptitude.

From The New Republic, we learn the following.

Wired, citing two unnamed sources, reports that Elez has the ability to write code on the Payment Automation Manager and Secure Payment System at the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, which control government payments that amount to more than a fifth of the U.S. economy. Elez’s level of access could allow him to bypass security measures and possibly cause irreversible damage to these systems. Talking Points Memo further reports that Elez has already used his power to significantly rewrite code for the payment systems.

Elez is one of Musk's boys.  Originally we were told that their access would be read only.  This is not the case.  Elez has admin privileges, he can do anything he wants to do.  He could take everyone's Social Security payments and put them in that Sovereign Wealth fund, or send them to Elon, or anything.  None of which would be good.  This has worried me more than anything else, so far.

But hey!  Egg prices are down.

So, that's what I wanted to complain about today.