You know how I usually wait until the end of a post to discuss politics? Yeah, we’re waiving that rule today. As a matter of fact, let’s go ahead and waive it for the rest of this month.
On Wednesday, Twitter suspended President Trump’s account for 12 hours, and made it clear that any further tweets inciting additional violence and/or violating Twitter’s rules would result in the account’s permanent suspension. Friday, Trump did just that in two tweets that in a broad context, could be interpreted as rallying his supporters to commit violence at an event where Trump himself would not be (Biden’s inauguration). Twitter pulled the plug on Trump not long after.
So Trump’s direct line to his base is now gone. White supremacists, gun nuts, QAnon conspiracy theorists, and “Christian” evangelicals who support a man who grabs ’em by the pussy will no longer have a direct line to their thought leader.
I doubt Parler is a publicly-traded company, but if it is, I bet its stock price will double.
We’ll come back to Trump at the end of this post. But for now, let’s get to the news.
Yep, Code Enforcement inspectors have been downright harassing restaurants for weeks now, and the Health Department has been smothering them with restrictions that have run a few restaurants completely out of business and have driven many others to the brink. On the other hand, hardly any attention has been paid to warehouses, where workers have crowded around each other, without masks, for 8-10 hour shifts. Where symptomatic employees have come to work and created COVID-19 clusters.
Dr. Randolph, I applaud you for shifting more of your enforcement staff to warehouses. However, I would encourage you to do one other thing – drop the 25% capacity requirement on restaurants so these people can make a decent living. In other words, Dr. Randolph, I’m asking you to do right, so that we can do more.
In other COVID news, more vaccine has arrived in Shelby County, and it will be administered at the Pipkin Building starting Tuesday. They’re going to use the SignupGenius app to schedule appointments. That’s an app I’m well-familiar with – it’s what our BBQ team uses to get members to sign up for tasks. It works really well!
Just City is a Memphis organization pursuing a more humane criminal justice system. They walk people convicted of crimes through expungement, so they can start over with a clean slate. They also have a community bail fund so that low-risk individuals do not have to spend pointless nights in jail awaiting trial (at a cost of $100+ a day to taxpayers). They have a Court Watch program encouraging transparency and accountability.
… and now, they have additional funding. Like, $200,000 in additional funding. You might have heard of the organization that provided the funding too – just a lil’ ole governing body that calls itself the NFL. The grant came from the league’s Inspire Change program, and represents one-third of Just City’s annual budget. It’s a credit to executive director Josh Spickler to land a grant in a city that doesn’t even have an NFL team.
This would be a good weekend for the Cookie Monster to visit Beale Street.
From the Memphis Flyer: Former Memphian adds Ambassador Hotel/SOB mural to South Main art scene
There is a new Downtown volunteer cleanup group on Facebook. The group will focus mainly on social distanced opportunities to clean up the area along the Mississippi River as well as Downtown.
The Grizzlies got a 115-110 win over the Brooklyn Nets last night. Brooklyn didn;t have KD or Kyrie and Memphis didn’t have Ja or JJJ.
Trump won’t attend Joe Biden’s inauguration, and Biden said he’s just fine with that. “He’s exceeded even my worst notions about him,” said Biden of Trump. “He is one of the most incompetent presidents in the history of the United States of America.” Tell us how you really feel, Uncle Joe! Also, ONE OF? I mean, I know none of us were around during James Buchanan’s administration, but he surely wasn’t worse at his job than the orange shitgibbon.
That’s it for today’s post. Ideally I’ll be back this afternoon with “Saturday update #2: Trump resigns,” but if not I’ll be back tomorrow.
