Spring and That Administration

Life at home has been ... shall we say, uninteresting.  We walk, we ride, we do laundry.  It's difficult to think of anything scintillating to say.  I'm having difficulty with the horror that is the current administration and their lawlessness and cruelty.

There are a few photos.  This is a Mugo pine.  They're slow growers, I think this one is probably 20 years old.  It's making yellow things, which I am assuming are part of the reproductive cycle. 

The red maple.  Someone ruthlessly pruned it a long time ago.  I'm going to have to take a little off of it because it's touching the house.  Look at that grass.  Last winter was mild, so we did not come home to patches of dead grass and some sort of fungus the neighbors call smut.  So, we have not had to plant grass seed and beg it to grow.  Once it gets hot, the grass will look bad, it always does.  PNW grass is weak.

It amuses me that I'm commenting on the beauty of the grass, since it is a stupid mono culture with few redeeming values, that wastes water and puts fertilizer run off into the environment.  The rabbits like it, they'll sit out there for hours eating.

The neighbors up the street have their usual display of blooming things.  Their yard looks very cheerful.

Moving on.  47's use of the Alien Enemies Act has been ruled unlawful, and they've been told to stop kidnapping people.  Jim heard a piece on NPR radio about how no one on that first flight to El Salvador was a terrorist or cartel member.  Their crime was one of skin color.  Despite being told to stop it, 47 turned to Libya to put people in their terrible prisons.  Libya, however, declined.  Good for them.

Nearly all of the remaining staff at the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health were laid off Friday (5/3/25), multiple officials and laid-off employees told CBS News, gutting programs ranging from approvals of new safety equipment to firefighter health, to curbing the spread of measles.  NIOSH  was also responsible for testing and certifying respirators like N95s; ensuring they could provide adequate protection from smoke, hazardous debris and viral threats. Gruesome details can be found here.

The administration has shut down CDC's infection control committee HICPAC, which issued guidance about preventing the spread of infections in health care facilities.  The Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee (HICPAC) crafted national standards for hand-washing, mask-wearing and isolating sick patients that most U.S. hospitals follow. The committee is now dead; long live hospital infections.  More is here.

If you're eligible for a covid vaccine, go get it now.  Vinay Prasad has been appointed the next director of the FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, after Peter Marks was forced out.  It will not surprise me if we never see another covid update because of him.  This is from wikipedia.

In October 2021, Prasad prompted social media controversy when he published a blog post comparing the U.S. COVID-19 pandemic response to the beginnings of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich. Bioethicist Arthur L. Caplan said that Prasad's arguments were specious and ignorant, and science historian Robert N. Proctor said that Prasad was "overplaying the dangers of vaccination mandates and trivializing the genuine harms to liberty posed by 1930s fascism".^[26]

In November 2021, Prasad expressed his opinion that pediatricians should warn parents about risks of COVID immunization such as a mild form of myocarditis.^[27] However, physician Jonathan Howard noted that Prasad was selectively omitting the risks of COVID disease^[28] which would not be consistent with the tenets of medical informed consent. 

Prasad is famous on twitter for blocking doctors, and there are many, who disagree with him.  From what I have read, my opinion is that he's a wing nut.  So, of course, he's in charge of vaccines, gene therapies and the blood supply.  The fact that he's closely aligned with RFK Jr should be disqualifying.  More is here.

There is a new nominee for Surgeon General.  "Casey Means has written about how, after attending Stanford Medical School and training to become a surgeon, she opted to leave "traditional medicine" to devote her life to "tackling the root cause of why Americans are sick." She co-founded Levels, a health app that can connect to glucose monitors, and built a large following as a health and wellness influencer." She's also aligned with RFK Jr.  The CBS article is here.

More and more of the health care system in this country is now aligned with RFK Jr.  We're all going to die.

As for the future of work, what with on shoring and all, there is this.  Go to the article, watch Lutnick celebrate the future of work.  He is so excited, saying "It's time to train people not to do the jobs of the past, but to do the great jobs of the future. This is the new model where you work in these kinds of plants for the rest of your life and your kids work here and your grandkids work here. We let the auto plants go overseas."  Yep, we're all going to be working in factories for the rest of their lives.  The republicans really need some help with their messaging.

This is what's happening in Memphis.  Elon built a new AI training center or something, and is powering it with 35 methane powered generators.  There are no air pollution controls on the generators.  This is in a primarily Black area, their health is already compromised from other industries, now this.  EPA does not care.  It's fine, they're doing away with regulations and unleashing the power of capitalism.  Meanwhile, these people are suffocating.  It's a long and depressing read.

 I will end with a cool thing from Ukraine.  This is a drone that has been used to ram ships, explode, and sink the ship.  The Ukrainians have now reworked it by putting SideWinder missiles on it, and shooting down MIGs from the water's surface.  Well done.