Walks in the Desert and More Stupid

It's been since the 12th that I've posted.  I feel like my life force is being drained, as well as my intellect, by the stupid that currently inhabits our government.  Just like the first time he was president, every day I think it can't get any worse, and every day it does.

There has been riding, there have been restorative hikes in the desert.  What there has not been is much mingling with our fellow citizens.  Have you been keeping track of this year's flu?  Apparently it's horrible, people in the hospital are being proned, or put on vents, or in a couple of cases on ECMO.  This is not your father's flu.

Today we hiked, it was eerily warm.  Up until today, the sun would be out, but the air would still be cold.  Today the air was warm, it's only February.  We walked up to the saddle between Golden Gate and Bren.  It's a stair master hike, goes straight up, and then back down.  This is a pile of rocks on a big rock we saw as we started up the climb.  It's a nice job of balancing rocks.

Here is a large rock formation.  It looks like it flowed here.  Tucson is in a caldera, so it's possible.  In the Tucson Mountain Park there are many different types of rock.

Look mid-photo.  Those are cholla, backlit by the sun, glowing.  They're really pretty when they do that.  Still deadly, but pretty.

View from the top.

This hillside is a Saguaro rich environment.

So, while we were on the way up, we saw a couple of young men going the opposite direction.  We both acknowledged what a beautiful day it was.  One of them said, Jesus gave me another day, so I'm going to enjoy it.  Ok.  They were the only people we saw on the trail.  When we got back down, the nicely balanced pile of rocks had been knocked over.  I wonder if they did it, and if so, why.  Jim rebuilt it a little. 

It's not nice to knock over other people's efforts, no matter how inconsequential you think it is.

I can't make rice.  We don't have a rice cooker here, won't fit in the car.  My rice is a complete and total failure, I am a rice fail.  However, you can buy this at Costco.  Twelve packages for about $10.  Nuke for 90 seconds, and there is rice.

President Musk continues with the purge.  The investigative staff at CDC, gone. A large part of the Despartment of Education, gone.  His minions are now into the IRS files, doing who knows what.

From an Associated Press article we learn, "The Trump administration has begun firing several hundred Federal Aviation Administration employees, upending staff on a busy air travel weekend and just weeks after a January fatal mid-air collision at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.
Probationary workers were targeted in late night emails Friday notifying them they had been fired, David Spero, president of the Professional Aviation Safety Specialists union, said in a statement."

Note the use of the word "probationary" in the second sentence.  Musk and his people think that word means they are new employees, who can be let go easily.  That's one meaning.  It also refers to people who were recently promoted, they go into probationary status so that in the event the promotion doesn't work out, they go back to their old position.  Due to this lack of understanding, many senior people, with decades of experience, have been let go.  This has happened a lot in the NIH.  

Secretary of Transportation Duffy is very concerned about our current Air Traffic control system.  That would be the one that just lost radar techs, controllers and other people due to Musk.  So, today he said this on twitter.

America deserves safe, state-of-the-art air travel, and President Trump has ordered that I deliver a new, world-class air traffic control system that will be the envy of the world.  To do that, I need advice from the brightest minds in America. I’m asking for help from any high-tech American developer or company that is willing to give back to our country.
Tomorrow, members of the

SpaceX team will be visiting the Air Traffic Control System Command Center in VA to get a firsthand look at the current system, learn what air traffic controllers like and dislike about their current tools, and envision how we can make a new, better, modern and safer system.

He's asking for volunteers!  Hey, come on down, write some code.  Air Traffic Control is one of the most complicated systems there is, and he thinks he'll just get some guys in, drink a little Mountain Dew, and make a new one.  I can't stand the stupidity.

Today a Delta flight from Minnesota crashed on landing in Toronto.  Notice the wings are off that plane.  Anyway, no one died, there are injuries.  If you google "cabin attendants walking on the ceiling of the delta airplane" you can see footage of cabin crew herding people towards the door on Instagram. Or you can go here, footage starts at about one minute.

So, that's it for me, for now.

End of Painting and Stupid

Painting is done!  Yay!  For the first time ever, I got no, none, not any paint on me or my clothing.  Yay me.  Here is Jim painting, under the overcast sky, next to the grapefruit tree.  I find it amazing that we have citrus trees that are producing fruit in our yard. 

The orange tree appears to be winding down, but there are many grapefruits left to eat.

Ok, on to the nightmare that is our current administration.

Things are going well in our nation's capital.  Secretary of Defense Hegseth has been interfering with the recruiting process.  From The New Republic we learn the following:

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s decision to withdraw Army recruiters from the nation’s top Black engineering event has ushered blunt criticism from military leadership.

“It’s fucking racist,” one active duty Army general told Military.com on the condition of anonymity. “For the Army now, it’s ‘Blacks need not apply’ and it breaks my heart.”

The Baltimore-based Black Engineer of the Year Awards (BEYA) has historically been a key event for the Pentagon to recruit high-caliber STEM talent. One Army recruiter told the service member news outlet that BEYA is one of the “most talent-dense events we do,” and that the branch “need[s] the talent.” BEYA, in turn, recognizes on its website that the “U.S. military is one of the largest STEM employers in the nation.”

The military is having difficulty making their recruiting targets as it is.  This will not make things better.

This will not improve things, either.  From Task and Purpose we learn: 

Air Force officers who have volunteered their own free time to make life in the service safer for those on active duty and less daunting for families during and after deployments say they are watching years of work be wiped away by the current crackdown on diversity initiatives.

At one of the Air Force’s largest bases, an annual Family Readiness Summit scheduled for Feb. 20 was canceled, according to emails obtained by Task & Purpose, even though it was funded, like the one held in February 2024, by the Air & Space Forces Association, an independent non-profit that receives donations from its members. Discussions about addiction at the 2024 Summit led the Air Force to begin selling Narcan, which can reverse an opioid overdose within minutes, at base exchanges.

This is being done under the guise of doing away with DEI and being woke.  It's hurting families, it's hurting service people, and it's just flat out wrong.  The military has a long history of being a difficult place for the families, these people were going the extra mile to help out, now they're shut down.

But here, is the worst thing I have read today.  This fills me with dread and makes me wonder if the republic really is going to fall.  I don't know if the article is behind a paywall, I subscribe to Wired.  So, I will cut and paste some of it.  Musk is bringing in people from Silicon Valley and making them CIOs of various departments.  The article is here.

The Trump administration is replacing some of the nation’s top tech officials with Silicon Valley talent tied to Elon Musk and companies associated with Peter Thiel. This could make it easier for Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) engineers to gain access to sensitive government systems, sources and experts say.

Over the past few weeks, several Musk-aligned tech leaders have been installed as chief information officers, or CIOs, at the Office of Management and Budget, the Office of Personnel Management, and the Department of Energy. CIOs manage an agency’s information technology and oversee access to sensitive databases and systems, including classified ones.

"Federal agency CIOs have authority over all agency asset management, which includes software used to monitor civil servant laptops and phones,” a former Biden official with firsthand knowledge of a CIO’s capabilities tells WIRED. “CIO shops manage and control IT access to all agency databases and systems, and have oversight over all the IT contracts per FITARA [the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act]. They have lots of IT budget and head count that Musk might want to take over. In agencies, CIOs are functionally as powerful as OIGs [the Office of Inspectors General].”

So, they're bringing in adults, and giving them this much power.  Palintir is a software platform that does data analysis, and is already tightly integrated with the military.  What could go wrong?

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been closed.  They were put in place after the 2008 financial disaster caused by unregulated credit default swaps.  We were lucky not to lose the country that time.  Anyway, President Musk wants twitter to get involved in payment systems.  This would bring it under CFPB oversight, they over see things having to do with money.  So, just like that, they're toast.

 

There's so much more, I think this is already long enough.

That's it!  That's all I've got.

 

House, Yard, Stupid

The back yard and the house continue to provide entertainment.  Saturday we went out, intending to do some grooming on a patch of really ugly aloe.  A few minutes of that convinced us that was a terrible idea.  So we removed it.  It's a lot like digging up day lilies, which we did at the Spokane house.  Lots of roots, they're close together and they're a pain to get out.  The first photo is mid-massacre.  I didn't get a good before photo.

Now they are gone.  Doesn't that look better?  We were able to cannibalize enough rocks from th e back of the yard to fill in the hole left by the departed aloes.  There was a lot of crispy dead vegetation to clean up.



Yesterday we rode from Christopher Columbus park.  Tucson is in the process to naming it something else, but it seems to have stalled.  These things take time.

Today started with plugging yet another free flowing drip line.  It was putting water up in the air, so that had to be done.  Then it was time for my favorite thing in the whole world to do.  Painting.  I hate painting.  I especially hate painting over my head, trying not to get paint on my yard work hat.  Yes, I know my shorts are a little big, but they're comfortable.

You can see where I cut in the edges if you look over Jim's head.  There was rotten wood that was replaced this summer when the roof was replaced.  The primer is done, now to get two coats of paint on the new wood.

 This morning was over cast, much better for taking photos.  This is the wooly cactus in the front yard.

So, what's fearless leader doing these days?  He went to the Super Bowl yesterday, got booed bigly, and then left early.  International coverage had the booing, US coverage used canned applause.  That's what I read, since I didn't watch it, I'm not a reliable source.  He left early, after spending millions of taxpayer dollars ($15M to $20M) to get there & back.  His team lost.

Tariffs on aluminum and steel are back, 25%, only this time it's on all exporting countries.  In several interviews, 47 has said "Gaza will be mine."  So, is that like his personal property?  Where did the residents go? He's not helping the cease fire and return of hostages with this stupid rhetoric.

This is an interesting read.  Here is a piece of the article.

Today, the National Security Agency (NSA) is planning a "Big Delete" of websites and internal network content that contain any of 27 banned words, including "privilege," "bias," and "inclusion." The "Big Delete," according to an NSA source and internal correspondence reviewed by Popular Information, is creating unintended consequences. Although the websites and other content are purportedly being deleted to comply with President Trump's executive orders targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion, or "DEI," the dragnet is taking down "mission-related" work. According to the NSA source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the media, the process is "very chaotic," but is plowing ahead anyway.

Italics are mine.  They're going through a list of words and deleting the web site that used them, to satisfy the no DEI requirement put forth.  This is so stupid it makes my stomach hurt.

So, that's all I have to say about things.

The Yard and Current Events

The wildlife people have been flying helicopters very low to the ground.  As it turns out, they're doing deer management.  So, they fly really low, when they spot a deer they shoot it with a tranquilizer dart.  Then one guy jumps out, attaches an ear tag and a radio collar.  Pretty cool.  We had two in the back yard yesterday, no collars were seen, however.

Look at the size of those ears.

Now that the saga of the irrigation system is done for now, we don't have much to do in the yard.  Since we don't know if we're going to be rendered poverty stricken by President Elon, we're holding off on the rock refresh until next year.  Our rock is looking pretty sparse, it gets ground into the ground and eventually you have to put more rock down.  Our irrigation guy also does rock, I am too old for that.  So, today we washed the car, cleaned some in the house, went back out, washed the bikes and then it was time to use the rowing machine.  It was a productive day.

This is the Brittlebush I mentioned awhile back.  It's hard to get a decent photo, the sun is too strong.  It looks like it will bloom soon.  You can sort of see the hints of yellow.  He's very happy to be on a drip line.  The neighbor's looks like it's half dead.

This is some sort of a cactus.  The long white curly things are its protection from herbivores.  It, too, is difficult to photograph.  I'm pretty sure it's alive, it's tough to know.

Oleanders, highly allergenic and poisonous.  The roots, stems, leaves, flowers, seeds, fruit, nectar and sap are all incredibly toxic to people and dogs.  I guess maybe I should wear gloves when pruning.  They make good hedges and they flower.  These were planted to screen the utility boxes in the corner of the yard.  We also have big ones in the back, who are much happier with their lot now that the giant Sages are no longer blocking the light, and they're on drip lines, too.

Here is a quote from Steve's blog that resonates with me.  I am not going to write about this every day. I am not, I am not, I am not.  And yet, these are things that I will want to recall later.  When I go back to what I wrote in the first reign of terror, it's interesting how much I don't remember.  So, here are highlights.

Feb. 5

Musk people invade NOAA.  NOAA employees receive a directive not to talk to or work with foreign nationals.  47 wants to sell NOAA off, and make people pay for weather reports. 
Musk people are in the Medicare and Medicaid payment software.
Head of DOT says this:

47 now says Palestinians won't be relocated permanently, they'll be able to come back.  He has changed this story about building a Gaza Riviera, I think it's a distraction.
The CIA sent an unencrypted email to the White House listing every person they've hired in the last two years.  This is a major security breach.
The US Military Academy, West Point, has disbanded clubs for women and minorities because no DEI.  I assume the KKK club is still OK.  This is just cruel, petty bullshit.  Cadets need a safe place to congregate.

Feb. 6

A 23-year-old representative from Elon Musk’s DOGE was granted access to the Energy Department’s IT system on Wednesday by Energy Secretary Chris Wright, sources told CNN. This despite objections from people in the agency, which controls access to info about the US nuclear weapons.
47 says we're going to replace the Air Traffic Control system.  All at once, using a single vendor.  What could go wrong?

The dismantling of USAID continues to reverberate. 

So, that's $2B that will not be paid to US farmers.  People will starve, kids will die.  But hey, it was a corrupt agency.  Not.

That's it!  That's all I have to say.  There's more, much more that could be said.

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.

These People are Wearing on my Last Nerve

I'm tired.  We rode today, then we came home and worked in the back yard.  We cut down a Sage that had died in place with a pruning saw, buried some drip lines, and generated much yard waste.  So I'm pretty much putting up stuff from twitter and a couple of paragraphs. 

Below is part of the stump and a dead branch from the interior of the Sage.  Dead, really dead.

Yesterday (2/1/25) 47 "released the water" in California.  He opened two dams and let it rip.  Fortunately the Army Corps of Engineers honored the request of California water officials and slowed the release, otherwise there would have been down stream flooding.  So, two dams worth of water were sent to Tulare lake where it will evaporate.  No water went to LA, no water went to any of the fire areas.  Emptying the reservoirs was done after the fires were put out.  In the spring, when planting starts in the Central Valley, there will be no water available for irrigation thanks to this stupid stunt on the part of Fearless Leader. 

Today, Musk's minions attempted to breach an area that has controlled access to classified data within USAID.  Putin and Xi want USAID gone, because if we pull out, they can move in an assert power in developing countries by "helping". The security guards on site attempted to block their passage.  Apparently they called Musk who had security removed and they and the guards' managers were placed on leave.  If this had happened in the Biden administration, the Muskies would have been arrested.  I think the coup is in place.  It appears that they have broken in to the files.

This is shameful.  They covered up the faces of women who worked in the agency.

In the end they took it back, and uncovered the women and POC.  Are we all to be erased in the near future?

Earlier today, Musk posted a list of Lutheran charities whose work he wants stopped, claiming that they are spending billions of dollars on things that don't align with 47's priorities.

Here is a good read on how mainstream media should be covering what's happening, but they are not.

We're fairly depressed.  For the first time in my life I am afraid of my government.

Oh yes, and he's going to bankrupt us all with his stupid tariffs for no good reason.

And then there is this.  This is from bluesky, note that I am not following NYT.