Monday, September 6, 2021

Whatever yuck that’s been making my days miserable here lately hasn’t gone anywhere. Oddly enough, it comes and goes, but inevitably doing anything for any length of time just wears me out. I felt pretty good today, but reading for a while tired me out, and after a nap, I feel awful. Go figure. My point is, don’t expect much if you do at all.

Though the deadline for leaving Afghanistan has passed, different groups are working to get out the last few. The Biden Administration is supposedly trying to work something out with the flavor of Taliban running Afghanistan to get the last 100 or so Americans out. At the same time, several reports are coming in that the Taliban is actively holding up flights out of the country.

We’re still cleaning up the mess from Ida all over the Eastern Coast, particularly here in the South. Over half a million folks are without power, most of them in Louisiana, and well over three-fourths of New Orleans is still in the dark. As a subtle reminder of why we call nature a “mother,” the weather service issued a flash-flood warning for Southeastern Louisiana. We’re coming up on the peak of the hurricane season – I know, right? – and there are possible storms brewing in the Gulf and Tropical Depression Larry inching towards the east coast of Florida. It’s too early to tell what kind of mess will come out of all this if any, but do keep aware of the skies, brethren.

The civilized world has been expressing its disgust with the recent severe anti-abortion legislation in Texas over the past week. To remind you, it bans any abortion after six weeks and the detection of a “fetal heartbeat,” which isn’t the thing they say it is. It also offers up a bounty of ten grand for anyone who snitches on someone who aids and abets a woman getting an abortion.

This means if you give a ride to a woman who gets an abortion, you can be on the hook even if you didn’t know. Even worse, if you’re found not guilty you’re still on the hook for your legal costs, which is generally not how it works. Lyft and Uber have announced they’ll support any driver who gets shit under this law financially and with legal aid. Website hosting service GoDaddy booted a website that collected snitches, which surprised me because I didn’t know GoDaddy was still around.

A number of national companies are organizing against the anti-abortion law, as well as some of the other weirder rules that came with it. Probably the most striking news came from the U.S. Department of Justice when Attorney General Merrick Garland said they’re looking at ways to protect the civil liberties of women having to live under these laws. Just what that will be we don’t know yet, but shots are fired.

And finally, we had 5,781 new cases of COVID in Mississippi today, which is less than I figured, and 125 deaths, which is more than I thought. This represents the first weekend of college football, and those people have no fear and less sense. For whatever reason, Ole Miss is playing Louisville tonight and currently beating them stupid 36-10. Amusingly, the Rebels’ head coach Lane Kiffin had to miss this game because he tested positive for COVID earlier last week. I don’t know how much his being gone affected things, but I do know that at least four players were ejected for targeting, which is initiating helmet-on-helmet contact during a tackle. That’s 15 yards and suspension for the rest of the game.

That’s got to be driving him nuts if nothing else.