Hold tight
Good Friday to all. And to those in the path of Hurricane Florence, I wish you the best as you work to avoid or endure this powerful storm.
Another standard potpourri of thoughts and comments, so here goes....
Did you know that the Department of Homeland Security has apparently diverted almost $170 million from other programs it oversees to ICE, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency? I didn't, either, until yesterday. There were mentions about $10 million being directly diverted the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which is governed by the Department, and with Florence making landfall today, one would hope that FEMA has appropriate resources to assist residents with recovery efforts.
Reports indicate the remainder of that money was also diverted away from the Transportation Safety Administration (the TSA, the folks who oversee airport security), the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office and the U.S. Coast Guard. Has the additional ICE funding been well spent? Hard to say.
Barring something remarkable, Brett Kavanaugh is going to be confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court. But not without some difficulty, as more negative information continues to surface on this candidate. This is the third time the U.S. Senate has evaluated him for confirmation to a position on the federal bench and by far the turn with the most scrutiny.
If you live outside of my home area in central Kentucky, you would not know that we have a rather nasty congressional campaign underway. Incumbent Republican Congressman Andy Barr is being opposed by a retired Marine fighter pilot, Amy McGrath, who has never sought nor held public office. This was already interesting, made so by McGrath's unexpected primary win over two-term Lexington Mayor Jim Gray, the Democratic party's hand-picked candidate. But the party got behind McGrath quickly and appear to be mounting a good effort to unseat the GOP loyalist Barr.
Barr's campaign went negative almost immediately and McGrath won't play along, although a SuperPAC has funded a series of ads reminding us of what's wrong with Barr and his consistent party-line voting record. Get the popcorn, this could be very interesting indeed.
Our neighborhood garage sale is tomorrow, and I briefly considered participating, since homes up and down our street (the main one through the neighborhood) will be having sales. But my wife and I looked around the house over the last couple of days and realized that we're in pretty good shape, we don't seem to have a lot of unwanted stuff lying around that needs to be moved out. So that's good, right?
We do have a separate issue pending, though. I think I mentioned that I was in the process of selling my office furniture of 15 years, and we completed that transaction this week. The buyer arrived to pay the balance owed and movers came and collected these large furniture pieces in short order.
So now the front room of our house is empty, except for a floor lamp, a coat tree and a bench from our kitchen dining set that I moved into the room to get an idea of how it would look. The table will require more effort to move into that space for a tryout but I hope to complete that in the next day or two. Then we'll know if we want to use that space for dining or for another purpose.
So that's that from here. Have a good weekend.
Another standard potpourri of thoughts and comments, so here goes....
Did you know that the Department of Homeland Security has apparently diverted almost $170 million from other programs it oversees to ICE, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency? I didn't, either, until yesterday. There were mentions about $10 million being directly diverted the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which is governed by the Department, and with Florence making landfall today, one would hope that FEMA has appropriate resources to assist residents with recovery efforts.
Reports indicate the remainder of that money was also diverted away from the Transportation Safety Administration (the TSA, the folks who oversee airport security), the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office and the U.S. Coast Guard. Has the additional ICE funding been well spent? Hard to say.
Barring something remarkable, Brett Kavanaugh is going to be confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court. But not without some difficulty, as more negative information continues to surface on this candidate. This is the third time the U.S. Senate has evaluated him for confirmation to a position on the federal bench and by far the turn with the most scrutiny.
If you live outside of my home area in central Kentucky, you would not know that we have a rather nasty congressional campaign underway. Incumbent Republican Congressman Andy Barr is being opposed by a retired Marine fighter pilot, Amy McGrath, who has never sought nor held public office. This was already interesting, made so by McGrath's unexpected primary win over two-term Lexington Mayor Jim Gray, the Democratic party's hand-picked candidate. But the party got behind McGrath quickly and appear to be mounting a good effort to unseat the GOP loyalist Barr.
Barr's campaign went negative almost immediately and McGrath won't play along, although a SuperPAC has funded a series of ads reminding us of what's wrong with Barr and his consistent party-line voting record. Get the popcorn, this could be very interesting indeed.
Our neighborhood garage sale is tomorrow, and I briefly considered participating, since homes up and down our street (the main one through the neighborhood) will be having sales. But my wife and I looked around the house over the last couple of days and realized that we're in pretty good shape, we don't seem to have a lot of unwanted stuff lying around that needs to be moved out. So that's good, right?
We do have a separate issue pending, though. I think I mentioned that I was in the process of selling my office furniture of 15 years, and we completed that transaction this week. The buyer arrived to pay the balance owed and movers came and collected these large furniture pieces in short order.
So now the front room of our house is empty, except for a floor lamp, a coat tree and a bench from our kitchen dining set that I moved into the room to get an idea of how it would look. The table will require more effort to move into that space for a tryout but I hope to complete that in the next day or two. Then we'll know if we want to use that space for dining or for another purpose.
So that's that from here. Have a good weekend.
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