Sort of Spring and the Awful

It's still cold.  The sun is out, but since it's in the 30's at night, it's a cold air mass.  I can't tell if I am coming down with something, or if the pollen is doing me in.  Tucson has a sequence of three steenking yellow trees that bloom in succession.  Spokane has many more steenking blooming trees who are blooming all at once.

One of the popular trees in the area is the Bradford Pear.  We have a huge on in the back yard, I swear it smells like something died.  I will be a happy camper when the blossoms drop off.  

I took this in the Home Depot parking lot.  They have a pear tree on every parking island. 

Yesterday we cut the deer netting off of the arborvitae.  I think we ruined a pair of scissors.  That stuff is stout.  It was a nice day, not too much wind, I was warm enough in my fleece vest.  Our neighbor's yard has interesting stuff growing in it.

 I like the yellow tree a lot.

Today, the neighbor across the street had landscaping professionals out.  They brought a lot of dirt, and a way to move said dirt.  The blue things are self powered and have gas engines.

Ok, that's the end of happy talk.

47 and Rubio have walked away from peace talks between Ukraine and Putin.  47 described Zelenskyy as the most difficult person he's ever dealt with because he does not want to give Crimea to Russia. This has given Putin free rein to bomb Kiev with ballistic missiles and bombs dropped from bombers.  The carnage is significant, entire apartment buildings have collapsed with people in them.  This is bad.  Zelenskyy also does not want to hand over all of Ukraine's mineral wealth to the US or the nuclear power plants to Russia.  47 has said that he will not even sell weapons to Ukraine, ever though they have $50B in cash.  Our defense industry needs to have a word with 47.

This was cut and pasted from twitter -
ICE Signs $30 Million Contract With Palantir to Build ‘ImmigrationOS’ ICE has awarded Palantir Technologies a $30 million contract to develop a new software platform to expand its surveillance and enforcement operations, building on Palantir’s decade-long collaboration with ICE. Key features and functions:
➤ ImmigrationOS will give ICE “real-time visibility” into visa overstays, self-deportation cases, and individuals flagged for removal, including foreign students flagged for removal for protesting US-Israeli genocide.
➤ ImmigrationOS will integrate data from multiple government database systems, helping ICE track immigration violators and coordinate with agencies like Customs and Border Protection.
➤ The platform is designed to streamline the entire immigration enforcement process—from identification to removal—aiming to reduce time, labor, and resource costs.

Nowhere is due process mentioned.

The Food and Drug Administration is suspending a quality control program for testing milk and other dairy products. The agency is citing reduced capacity. It has 20,000 fewer employees as a result of the DOGE cuts under Trump and Musk.  The FDA this month also suspended existing and developing programs that ensured accurate testing for bird flu in milk and cheese and pathogens like the parasite Cyclospora in other food products.  Articles are here and here.  This is particularly bad for people who drink raw milk.

This is one of the worst so far.  "The National Institutes of Health will begin collecting Americans' private health records as part of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s controversial plan to discover a cause and a cure for autism. NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya told a panel of experts about the plan this week.  The NIH plans to gather information from a wide range of private sources, including pharmacy chains, hospitals and wearable devices with health sensors, like smartwatches."  They want to violate HIPAA and create a tracking database of autistic people.  Why?  Why do they want to do this?  Parallels are being drawn between this and what Hitler did prior to WWII.  I do not see how this will shed any light on why some people are on the spectrum and some aren't.  Apparently he's also interested in people who have Tourette's.  Where does it stop?  Hopefully this will be tied up in court forever.  Article is here.

You may have heard about the US citizen who allegedly walked up to CBP and said he was in the country illegally.  He was arrested and put in detention for 10 days.  That was a complete and utter bald faced lie, the actual story is told here.  It's very different from what the government said.

 Goldman Sachs says we will lose 90 billion in tourism this year and Elon has saved 11 billion. Now can you understand how Trump went bankrupt 6 times. That’s a net loss of 79 billion dollars. Florida is going to be the biggest loser most likely.

 

Attorney General Bondi has started a Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias.  There will be a snitch line where people can call in and report their co-workers.  How is this even legal?

 

Meanwhile, Abrego Garcia remains in the gulag in El Salvador, while 47 ignores an order from SCOTUS to bring him back.

 

Every day it's something new and more awful.