∙ Congratulations to Mary Thompson, a member of the Ventura Breeze family for being selected as the new president of the Olivas Adobe docents.
∙ Students at public and private K-12 schools in Ventura County and throughout California will no longer be required to wear masks after March 11, regardless of their vaccination status. The state’s decision to lift the mask mandate for students is in line with guidelines issued by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The mask wearing mandate hasn’t made sense for some time. Go into a restaurant wearing a mask, sit down shoulder to shoulder at a counter and then take it off. I understand some people who might feel vulnerable to COVID should still wear them.
∙ Talk about a conditioned reflex – while driving, my car’s phone rang and I pulled over to answer it so I wouldn’t get a ticket. Good laugh when I realized what I did, rather than just speaking.
∙ As you know, Russia has launched a wide-ranging attack on Ukraine.
“I went in yesterday and there was a television screen, and I said, “Putin declares a big portion of Ukraine, Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful,” Trump told a conservative podcaster in an interview. The man’s a genius. Oh, that’s wonderful.”
This genius has caused millions of Ukraine’s to flee their country, thousands on both sides to die, financial institutes in shambles and our gas prices look like they’ll hit $6 a gallon. Of course, Trump thinks the oligarch dictator Putin is a genius, exactly what Trump wants to be.
Andrew Bates, the White House deputy press secretary, responded with a scathing tweet.
“Two nauseating, fearful pigs who hate what America stands for and whose every action is driven by their own weakness and insecurity, rubbing their snouts together and celebrating as innocent people lose their lives.”
Several Trump advisers and associates have practically begged the former president to end his effusive-sounding praise of Putin. His former director of national intelligence has voiced his dismay at the ex-president’s remarks praising Putin. Dan Coats said he was “stunned” by Trump’s remarks. “I cannot think of any other US president that would in a situation like this say what he said.”
∙ And speaking of gas prices in California, federal and state taxes and fuel fees add about $1.20 per gallon to our gas prices. Perhaps these could be suspended until prices go lower.
∙ Judges on Colombia’s constitutional court voted to decriminalize abortion until 24 weeks of gestation. Abortion rights groups sued to have the procedure removed from the penal code. Perhaps we could trade Columbia for Texas.
The nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson is an attempt to “defile” the supreme court and “humiliate and degrade” the US, the Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson claimed.
If confirmed, Jackson, whose nomination was announced by Joe Biden earlier on Friday, will be the first Black woman on the court. Carlson said Jackson was nominated “because of how she looks”. He said, “Do you want to live in that country? Most people don’t, of all colors. They think you should be elevated in America based on what you do, on the choices not on how you were born, not on your DNA, because that’s Rwanda.”
This is perhaps the most disgusting thing I’ve ever heard a commentator (even from Fox) ever say.
He should be banned from ever appearing on any TV, radio or social media platform again.
Jackson might be one the most qualified justices ever. Born in Washington, D.C., and raised in Miami, Florida. Jackson attended Harvard University for college and law school, where she served as an editor on the Harvard Law Review. She began her legal career with three clerkships, including one with U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Stephen Breyer. Prior to her elevation to an appellate court and from 2013 to 2021, she served as a district judge on the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. Jackson was also vice chair of the United States Sentencing Commission from 2010 to 2014. Since 2016, she has been a member of the Harvard Board of Overseers.
∙ Guns In the News:
A 4-year-old Georgia boy accidentally shot himself with a gun outside a Publix store as his mother was shopping inside. The boy, his mother, an infant and a 13-year-old relative arrived at a store and the mother went into the store alone with the children remaining in the car. The child accidentally shot himself inside the vehicle, police said. The 13-year-old then immediately ran inside the business for help.
Last month, another 4-year-old boy in Louisiana fatally shot himself after finding a gun in the back seat of a car he was in as his mother and a friend smoked marijuana in the front.
So far in 2022, there have been at least 30 unintentional shootings by children, resulting in 13 deaths and 18 injuries.
Perhaps as part of obtaining a license to carry a gun, a required part of the exam should be an IQ test so that 4-year-olds can’t have access to guns.
A father fatally shot his three daughters and a chaperone during a supervised visit at a California church before killing himself.
The 39-year-old man, who wasn’t immediately identified, started shooting inside the sanctuary of The Church in Sacramento during a visit.
The man, who was estranged from his daughters’ mother, gunned down the young girls – ages 9, 10, and 13 – and a male chaperone. The gunman used an AR-15 style semiautomatic rifle in the attack.
Fourteen people were shot during a party at a Las Vegas hookah lounge including one man who was killed and two others who were critically wounded after two people got into an altercation and exchanged gunfire.
A Saturday night shooting in Portland, Oregon, that left one woman dead and five people injured started with a confrontation between an armed homeowner and armed protesters, according to a Portland Police Bureau.
∙ For the first time, chimpanzees were spotted capturing insects and applying them to their own wounds, as well as the wounds of others, possibly as a form of medication. This behavior of one animal applying medication to the wounds of another has never been observed before, and it may be a sign of helpful tendencies in chimpanzees similar to empathy in humans, according to a new study.
Researchers witnessed multiple instances of this behavior within a community of about 45 chimpanzees at the Loango National Park in Gabon. Perhaps this could be the solution to the shortage of nurses.
