Riding and That Man

It made it into the 80's today.  We may or may not have hit a new record high for this day.  Yesterday and today we rode.  We've cobbled together an acceptable alternative to the trail closures that has a paved parking lot (baby heads are hard on the feet), time at the lake, the two switch backs we like and a trip down a residential street that doesn't feel like we'll be killed.  It's a dead end, so there is not much traffic.  We don't have the terrible hill up to the gate, because that is behind the crime scene tape.

It's really annoying, their project plan says they're closing the trails because they occasionally have to move equipment.  How about if they put flags in the logging crews hands and make safe passage when it's needed, instead of 2.5 months of closures.   

The lake was pleasant to look at.   There is a new camp host.  He's a big, imposing looking guy, and he's very nice.  His wife is a retired police officer, so the two of them are ideal to run a boat ramp. 

Look up the hill in the distance.  They appear to be cutting a road down the hill to put houses on the waterfront.  One wonders how they will stabilize that hill, once the vegetation is off.

 

There is a quince growing on the camp host's site, it's an impressive shrub.

This is what we see driving home. 

47 has been busy.  I'm short on time, so I will give us the Cliff's notes on some of the awfulness.

The president's executive order instructs the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and other federal agencies “to cease Federal funding for NPR and PBS” and further requires that they work to root out indirect sources of public financing for the news organizations. Article is here.

 

The Trump administration has discussed transferring migrants with criminal records held in the United States to two African countries, Libya and Rwanda, multiple sources familiar with the talks told CNN.  The Wall Street Journal previously reported this month that several countries, including Libya and Rwanda, were considered as potential partners to receive migrants deported from the U.S.  An article is here.

Trump just shut down all the school mental health programs and neighborhood anti-violence programs funded by the 2022 gun bill. Millions of kids just lost their mental health worker or after school program.

This is one of the most egregious things yet.  60 minutes did a story awhile back on people in Alabama, mainly Black people, who do not have functioning sewer systems.  Raw sewage pools up in their yards, ditches, and sometimes into their homes.  Money was appropriated to fix this and put in either septic tanks or a sewer system.  47 has cancelled that project because it's DEI.  Article is here.  The Alabama health department doesn't feel like they need to address this, now no one does.

The government under President Donald Trump is bending the arc of US history in a new direction, away from the civil rights focus of the past 60 plus years.  Addressing or even acknowledging racial injustice toward people of color is out.  Separating church and state is out, according to Trump.  Exposing anti-Christian bias and being ‘anti-woke’ is in.  The Department of Justice division created by the landmark 1957 Civil Rights Act to defend American’s rights has a new mission: rooting out anti-Christian bias, antisemitism and “woke ideology,” the head of the division, Harmeet Dhillon, recently told conservative commentator Glenn Beck.  The CNN article I borrowed this from is here.

There is much much more, but I think I will stop here. 

OK, one more thing.  Judge Ketanji Brown spoke at a legal meeting and had things to say.  Go here, and read what she said.