Or like Yogi once said…”it’s like deja vu all over again”.

Yep…not a day goes by that our politicians of almost all stripes demonstrate…once again…that hypocrisy is the most important thing they do.

Ya got Stacie Abrams who’s running again for the governor position in GA…and she is outspokenly and practically cultish about a mask mandate in schools. That’s all fine and dandy even though a study released this week by John Hopkins concluded that masks had little to no effect on covid case numbers. Me…I think that mandates on a broad scale are an over reaction and that they should be targeted to cities or particular schools or whatever that have high case rates…and I believe that people should follow whatever rules a town, school district, business, or organization establishes. Being both fully vaccinated and boosted as well as recovered from covid…we’re essentially immune to it at this point. Yes…we could get reinfected with one of the variants but with vaccinations reinfections are almost exclusively mild to no symptoms. Despite that…we put on our masks if requested by a venue or business or whatever…that’s just common courtesy.

Less I be accused of only picking on those that favor mask mandates…I’m against pretty much any mandate pro or con regarding masks or vaccines for any kind of wide sweeping category like a state or city or federal workers or businesses over 500 or whatever. Mandates should be pushed down to the lowest level possible…individual schools for instance rather than entire districts…and the decision should be made apolitically…based on studies and scientific research. We’ve all seen how masks were not recommended to save them for health care workers to everybody wear them to wear them inside to the latest study from John Hopkins that said masks didn’t really have any effect on infection rates. The problem with “follow the science” is that various studies come to different conclusions based on how it was conducted and the parameters involved…and both sides in this debate blindly believe those studies that support their desired outcome and decry those that don’t as fake science.

As I said…shove them as far down the totem pole as possible and let school principals or store managers make the decision based on local conditions and whatever the best non politicized research says at the time…and make sure that you’re not only considering research that supports your desired outcome.

Anyway…Ms. Abrams…was recently photographed maskless while surrounded by masked school children. Despite her strident demands for mask mandates in schools…her photo op was more important to her. She almost immediately deleted the photo when the other side pounced on it…and claimed that the other side is pathetic for bringing it up. 

Ditto for the mayor of San Francisco, the CA governor, etc, etc.

Ditto for Marjorie Taylor Greene…and others on the other side who flagrantly flout the rules.

Moving on…as you saw on the news the President has vowed to appoint a black woman to the SCOTUS. That’s certainly his right but announcing it was both pandering to the progressive left as well as a dumb political decision. He could easily have had a broad spectrum of candidates and then chosen a black woman as the best qualified person…and looked good going that but instead it almost seems like that’s the only qualification she will need. It isn’t true…most of the women the talking heads are featuring seem qualified and the fact that they’re Democrats and left of center isn’t really surprising at all…but the politically smart thing to do would have not to make it seem like a quota.

Then there’s the Republican senator who demanded that a SCOTUS judge needed to know the law and not just the Prada catalog…again…just a dumb political statement as obviously a judge is going to know the law and just because they happen to be a loose constructionist instead of a strict constructionist doesn’t make them unqualified…political parties have been arguing that debate since the dawn of the Constitution.

Then there are the Democratic Senators who are already lined up to approve whoever and whichever black woman the President selects…and they’re not talking about qualifications but about how it’s important to both make this politically popular on the left appointment and to reverse the extreme partisanship of the current justices…even though all 9 of them are considered partisan by one or the other party…back to the strict/loose construction argument again on that one. I read today that back in Sep 2019 the former President nominated a black woman to be a district judge in TX…and 13 of the Democratic Senators voted against her…I guess in her case the fact that she was nominated by a Republican overrode their desire to diversify the court.

And this just in…it isn’t just politicians…Sports Illustrated announced a new advertising mandate for the May 22 Swimsuit Issue. Yeah…you know, the one with all of the scantily clad to not clad at all young ladies in swimming suits. I never thought it was anything but soft core porn myself since posing in a bikini isn’t athletic and this is Sports Illustrated but no matter. Anyway…the new advertising mandate is that in order to advertise in that issue a company must “be a brand that is helping to drive gender equity forward”…whatever that means. 

Stupid…all of them.

Then there’s the whole gerrymandering brouhaha but you only read about the evil red states doing it in most of the media you see…that happening in blue states is ignored. Going along with that…we keep reading all about the horrible voter suppression in red states but never in blue states…despite that fact that the rules for voting in Delaware for instance…the President’s home state…are far more restrictive than those in Georgia…which by the way are much less restrictive than the rules before the pandemic.

I don’t want to make it sound like it was all kumbaya back in the day…but it sure seems like at least most of the time our congress critters could negotiate and compromise with the other side to actually pass legislation that gave a little to each side and made the country a better place…and SCOTUS judges were routinely approved by almost unanimous approval in the Senate because in those days when compromise wasn’t a dirty word folks on both sides figured that the President got to pick the justice and just because he and the selection were in the opposite party didn’t make them unqualified. Different yes…but still qualified. 

Then we got into the internet driven 24 hour news cycle and media folk decided that reporting the news wasn’t important anymore…the important thing was to make and be the news and to vilify those who didn’t agree with your political views.

Sure wish we could go back…but it pro’bly ain’t happenin’. It would be so nice to have some smart, truthful politicians.

Enough of that though…

You’ll recall these two images of an Osprey and a Black Crowned Night Heron from my last post that Neil took at Circle Bar B.

He decided to re-edit some of those photos with the latest additions to his post processing software arsenal…his new AI driven noise reduction one and his AI driven one that increases the resolution and sharpness like you see a lot on crime shows on TV.

Here’s what you get after those operations…he thinks they look considerably better.

It’s pretty easy to see if you look at the feather details around the eyes and beak and that there’s something to that whole AI thing after all.

He got a couple shots out back of the lanai today…a Snowy Egret showed up and this one is pretty much full on with breeding plumage.

He noticed this gator on our side of the pond while taking the above shots…this is the small gator only about 4 feet or so long.

This is actually a Little Blue Heron…if you recall from previous shots they’re completely dark blue with reddish tints up around the neck…but those are adults. Juveniles are completely white and as they become teenagers on the way to being adults they become what is called a changeling and gradually change color.

And one last shot of the Snowy reflected in the water.

Interesting things found on the net.

You would never have guessed it…but from the northernmost point of Brazil it is closer to Canada than to the southernmost point of Brazil.

Cyas.