SCOTUS Confirms LBGTQ Rights

Today was an astounding day.  The Supreme Court ruled that employers may not fire people because of their sexual orientation.  Even more astonishing was Justice Gorsuch wrote the decision, and based it on the literal words in Title Seven of the Civil Rights Act.  Alito tried to argue that in 1964 "sex" never would have applied to LBGTQ people.  I am hopeful that this will negate the orange man signing the declarations that LBGTQ people are not protected under the ACA and that trans people can't serve in the military.

Mrs. Betty Bowers was funny on twitter.  

And there was this.

The FDA has withdrawn its emergency use approval of hydroxychoroquine, citing the fact that it doesn't help and can cause death due to fatal arrhythmias.  The orange man had a hard time accepting that, saying that "many people" felt it had saved their lives.  Tell that to the patients at the VA who died while taking it.  Anyway, that worm Azar commented that people could still take it off label if their doctor would prescribe it.  Admit you were wrong, worm people!

There was a massive Denial of Service Attack today.  Phone networks, Instagram, Twitter, et al. were affected.  It's too bad the orange man fired the Cyber Security department.  That was after they fired the Pandemic Response team.  How did that work out?

Today was much like every other day, but with less wind.  The Bighorn fire has spread to 14,000 acres.  Summerhaven, which is a small community at the top of Mt. Lemon has been warned they may have to evacuate.  This is not good.

Fruit and Defunding

Well, I guess blogger is trying to force me off the legacy platform right now.  The upload photos box comes up blank.  No photos can be loaded.  I went over to the new one and uploaded and then went back.  The new layout and the stupid meaningless icons just offend the living snot out of me.  If you ever edit html, like if you get two photos stuck together without a break between them, you'll hate that, too.  They took all of the spaces out, so it's really hard to tell where you need to put the break code. It's incredibly difficult to read now, it's all strung into one long sentence.

I have a new pod to show us.  I'm not sure what kind of tree it came from.  The color on it is really nice.

This it the saguaro on the side of the wash by the house.  It has several open fruits.  Look about dead center, there is a tiny bird eating the fruit.

They're messy looking.  I guess the flowers eject the core of jelly and seeds.

Altanta PD shot an African American in the back Friday night.  I don't understand what the overwhelming threat to their safety was since he was running away.

AOC did an interview with Marie Claire.  She was asked what defunding the police would look like.  Her response was that it would look like the white suburbs.  She's got a point there.  You can find the interview here.

It's really hot and really windy.  June is shaping up to be as bad as we thought it would be.  Since our case loads are sky rocketing, the thought of mall walking is just not that appealing. We've hearkened back to H1N1 days when we wouldn't spend time in a mall even though it was hot.

Hot and Masks

We were up and out early on the bikes today.  Probably not early enough given how dang hot it was, but a person can only give up so much sleep.  I keep thinking that eventually we'll acclimate and it won't suck so much.  That day can not come soon enough.

So we saw something new and cool today.  After saguaros boom, they fruit.  The fruit opens and bats from Mexico come up to feed on them at night.  During the day, doves, bugs and other critters come for the nutrients.  Eventually they dry up and fall to the ground and other animals eat them. What's interesting to me is that the bats come from way far away, how do they know it's time to fly north?

Here is a better picture than my cell phone camera of the open fruit.  This was swiped from the internet.

The refrigerator repairman is here again to work on the annoying leak from the water dispenser and the equally annoying leak in the freezer.  Thank all of the saints that Jim had the foresight to get the five year warranty.  This is visit number five for this frig.  Eventually we can file a "lemon" claim on the thing and get our money back.  This trip may be enough service calls to qualify.  It just annoys the living spit out of me.  It was very expensive and I think it should do better.  Today we're getting a new water valve and ice maker

Anyway, I'm sitting in my chair with a bandana on so I don't have to hand wash a mask.  I know in my head that I am not suffocating, but why is breathing in a mask so unpleasant?

Eric Topol put up a tweet with a bunch of science about why the wearing of a face covering is so important.  There are a lot of words, but it can be summed up with "wear the damn mask."  The Irish Times also has a piece with words and not charts.  A friend of mine put this up on Facebook, which also simplifies the findings.  It's the asymptomatic people that are the scariest.  We were in Safeway yesterday, and mask wearing is at about 60-70%.  They're still limiting how many people can be in the store, spraying the carts with disinfectant and the aisles are one way.  We're still working on obeying the directional arrows.  But there are people with naked faces, and that is starting to look really weird to me, to see the bottom of people's faces.

I like Captain Sulu's take on the wearing of masks.  As a child, he was sent to a Japanese internment camp, despite being an American citizen.

NPR repeated a Brief  but Spectacular Moment by Damon Davis last week.  He's an artist and film maker.  It's about his experience of being African American in the US.  It was really well said and I want to keep the link.  The link has the video as well as a written transcript of what he said.  It's well worth looking at.

Finally, if you want to read Walter Shaub's fantastic take down of John Cleese comparing toppling Confederate statues to taking down all Aristotle and Socrates' statues, go here and read it.  That man can truly craft a sentence.  Update 8/30/2022:  Shaub's tweet has gone missing.  You can read the Cleese tweet here.

And Now in Local News

It's been awhile, but there are local things to discuss.  Our boredom and ennui continue, nay even increase, with the news that Arizona is a hot spot for the virus.  Of all the hot spot states, we have the highest percentage increase.  The cause seems to be all of the yahoos who just could not stay home over Memorial Day and went to Lake Havasu where they congregated in large numbers, drank much alcohol and wore no masks.  Currently eight out of ten hospital beds are occupied; the health officials are concerned at how many people are really sick and are on ventilators.  However, our governor insists all is well and we should go out for a beer and a haircut.  Our mayor has Tucson closed down until June 22.  There has been some hinting that the governor's office is fudging the numbers, they're lower than what the hospitals are reporting.

Previously I have complained about the fact that Tucson built this beauteous bike trail system, completely separated from cars, and then they keep closing large sections of it for one reason or the other.  Jim and I have been working up to riding on the road again, or we were until this.  This is Kinney Road, which is pretty much the only way out of here to get to the trail.  Notice that the right lane is completely gone.  After surviving this two mile stretch (which had a good shoulder) it's not a terrifying ride.  But no.  There is yet another inexplicable road project which will cost $5M and take a year.  So, another winter season will pass with us not having a way to the trail except by driving.

They're rerouting Bopp so that it aligns with Sarasota.  Bopp is a lightly used road, since few people live out there.  Sarasota extends about a mile from Kinney and dead ends at a trail head.  Why is it so important to realign Bopp and put a stop light there?  I read the project description and was thoroughly unenlightened as to why this is more important than fixing the pot holes that plague this entire area.  The dashed line is the new route for Bopp, and then they will terminate old Bopp before it reaches Kinney.  I'm really peeved about the whole thing.

Last Thursday we were bored.  How bored were we?  It was 105 and we decided to drive out east and wander around a nursery.  You have to be pretty bored.  Their plants were not looking as good as they did last spring. Here we have an agave which has produced a flower spike which has impacted the sun screen that keeps the plants from sun burning.  One has to admire its tenacity.

I really like the way this guy sprouts out arms everywhere.

This is a great looking cactus.  The word wooly comes to mind.

In the past I have mentioned that Palo Verde trees make pods.  We have pods everywhere.  Apparently they were a food source for the Tohono O'odham.

There is a good sized fire burning north of Tucson in the Catalinas along Pusch Ridge.  As of this morning it was only 10% contained.  They were slow to get fire retardant down because stupid people had drones flying in the area, which grounds the smoke bombers.  I think there should be significant jail time for being that stupid.

NYT has a new article up about the use of the National Guard last Monday when Barr used troops to clear the street in front of the Episcopal church so the orange man could stage his photo op.  "Some of the Guardsmen were just out of basic training, and others had no experience in controlling disturbances in the streets. Guard troops were allowed to drive heavy vehicles on the streets without the usual licensing."  "Tens of thousands of rifle and pistol rounds were stored in the D.C. Armory and partitioned in pallets, labeled by their state of origin, to be used on American citizens in case of emergency.”   Think about it, there were actually plans in place for the National Guard to fire live rounds at the protestors.  There will quite likely be significant investigations into the decisions that were made.  Currently the Guard has suspended all of its recruiting efforts.

In great news, today Tucker Carlson lost T-Mobile, Papa Johns, SmileDirectClub, and Disney as sponsors.  As you no doubt recall, Fox got rid of O'Reilly after he lost his sponsors.  Maybe Tucker will be next.

The Day in Photos

I was alerted in the comments on yesterday's post that Ivanka's speech had been reworked on Twitter.  Ivanka was supposed to give a graduation address at Wichita State Tech.  The students there got a petition together and requested that she be uninvited due to the administration's positions on racial disparity and everything else under the sun.  Ivanka, being a senior advisor, is involved in all of that.  Anyway, her speech was cleverly altered.  The link to play it is here.

Today in Bristol UK, the statue of Edward Colston was pulled off of its plinth and thrown into the harbor.  Colston was a horrible man, and so were the aristocracy of England at that time, they were all investors.  This afternoon some person on twitter whose name I don't remember was talking about how terrible a thing this was, and the sole remaining heir responded with no, this is great.  So I'm glad to see another terrible statue taken down.  Vice has an article with imbedded video of the statue going into the drink which you can read here.

 In case you're wondering exactly where the statue is now, Google Maps has been updated.

David Olusoga, a historian, did a brief video on why this statue needs to be gone.  His basic point is that statues do not teach history, books and museums do that.  Statues glorify people and their accomplishments, and Edward Colston is not worthy of that.  Video can be played here.  In Brussels, protesters are standing on the monument to King Leopold II chanting murderer and waving the flag of Democratic Republic of Congo where the king's atrocities took place.  Germany cancelled Octoberfest because of the virus, and yet, here they are in the streets.

 
Today was a bad day for the orange one.  Former Secretary of State Colin Powell went on record saying that the orange man should not be president.  This was followed by Mitt Romney stating he would not support his re-election campaign, either.  And then there was this.  Mitt is marching towards the White House.  I did not think I would ever see this.

Fuji has announced that it will no longer sell bicycles to the police after seeing footage of the police using said bicycles as clubs against peaceful protestors.  I don't know how much market share they have, but the important thing is now Trek is being pressured to follow suit.

D-Day Anniversary

Today is the 76th anniversary of the Normandy Invasion, when the Allies landed on Normandy to remove the stain of the Fascist Hitler.

Today we see this on the orange man's campaign website.  This person is such a tool, it hurts me.

The presence of all of these men with all of those guns and no identifying badges or patches in DC has raised the hackles of many people, including me.  How does one know if they're actual official gun carrying people, or are they the Proud Boys doing cosplay?  I give you this photo.  Who are these people?  The current theory is that they're Bureau of Prisons people.  They're trained to put down riots in prison.  Exactly what one wants at a protest with civilians.

Politico did a very interesting article on just how many armed people are employed by the federal government.  It's a staggering number.  I will excerpt from the article now.

To understand the police forces ringing Trump and the White House it helps to understand the dense and not-entirely-sensical thicket of agencies that make up the nation’s civilian federal law enforcement. With little public attention, notice and amid historically lax oversight, those ranks have surged since 9/11—growing by roughly 2,500 officers annually every year since 2000. To put it another way: Every year since the 2001 terrorist attacks, the federal government has added to its policing ranks a force larger than the entire Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. 

The public has little understanding or appreciation for the size of some of these agencies, each of which has its own protocols, training, hiring guidelines and responsibilities. On the lighter side, few tourists know, for instance, that the National Gallery of Art—home to some of the world’s most famous artwork—has a shooting range for its police tucked away above its soaring central rotunda. On the darker side, the roughly 20,000 federal prison guards known formally as the Bureau of Prisons—whose riot units make up a sizable chunk of the officers imported to D.C. and who represent the single largest component of federal officers in the Justice Department—are concerning to see on the streets in part because they’re largely untrained in civilian law enforcement; they normally operate in a controlled environment behind bars with sharply limited civil liberties and use-of-force policies that would never fly in a civilian environment. 

 And then there is this:

The list of crimes these agents and officers collectively enforce is endless, so much that a tongue-in-cheek Twitter feed daily shares the most obscure federal criminal penalties. One of this week’s examples: “21 USC §331, 333, 343 & 21 CFR §150.160(b)(2) make it a federal crime to sell jam made from a combination of more than five fruits.”

In news of Covid-19 we have this headline in a Phoenix paper. 

Banner says ICU beds are approaching 100% capacity

Banner is the biggest healthcare network in AZ.  They came in and bought everything, including the UofA medical school hospital.  They're everywhere.  Anyway, the article is sort of misleading, because hospitals can increase capacity by 25% by building temporary ICUs, but it's still pretty creepy.  Cases are up, as well, but our illustrious governor says it's due to increased testing and not because the state is wide open.  We can eat in restaurants now, and go to bars.  Not that we would.  We contemplated going to a cactus nursery today because we are so bored, but the thought of going on a weekend was too dire for me.

Look, you can see the new mural from space.  Pretty cool.

Poor Ivanka has been cancelled.  Poor her.

There was almost a sunset last night.  Not quite.  It did cool down, it was 71 degrees when I left on my bike this morning, it was almost chilly.  Not to worry, back to 105 by Wednesday.  Yay!