Another Monday of Motes

Will the stupid ever stop: Republican Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley sparred Tuesday with Berkeley law professor Khiara Bridges after she called him “transphobic” for suggesting only women get pregnant. There’s a whole lot more here but I’m not going beyond this. This is just plain stupid. And lawyers wonder why people say; “Hang the lawyers first.”

More stupid: California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) on Tuesday signed into law a bill allowing victims of gun violence and others to sue firearm manufacturers. The Firearm Industry Responsibility Act, which wholly takes effect in July 2023, allows individuals, local governments and the California attorney general to sue gun manufacturers if their firearms are used irresponsibly or have caused harm. Just how the hell is a manufacturer to know how a person is going to use their product? So now, if your husband beats you to death with a hammer, do the kids get to sue Stanley Tools? My brother died from alcohol caused cirrhosis. Do I get to sue Coors?

Your ”Representatives”: The people who shut down your businesses and killed your careers are now asking that you re-elect them so they can keep their jobs. Never forget what they’ve done to you.

I Warned you before: In case anyone needed reminding that using Amazon hardware is tantamount to bugging your own home, it’s now emerged that the web giant has been handing over Ring doorbell videos to police without owners’ consent. Amazon has given Americans’ doorstep footage to law enforcement at least 11 times so far this year. The figure emerged in a letter Amazon sent to Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) at the beginning of July after he’d asked Amazon about privacy violations in June. Ring’s company policy does say it can share a user’s data without their consent. Kind of puts new meaning to “anything you say can be used against you”.

It’s a neighborhood thing: As clashes between rival gangs in Port-au-Prince’s Cite-Soleil neighborhood escalate, thousands of people are trapped without access to food, drinking water and medical care in an isolated part of the Haitian capital, Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres, or MSF) has said. Residents have been unable to leave an area in Cite-Soleil known as Brooklyn, while trucks that bring drinking water into the neighborhood have been unable to enter. Fighting erupted on Friday in a battle between members of two rival gangs and that at least 50 people had died and more than 50 were wounded. And on the other side of the island, is the Dominican Republic, a popular tourist destination.

I could have guessed: An explosive new analysis reveals that Democrat President Joe Biden’s administration has very few business-oriented officials in the administration and that the vast majority of people handling economic policy for the United States government under Biden have no business experience whatsoever.

Gas in Honolulu 7/12/21.