I hope you all had a Merry MAGA Christmas! And a Happy Trump New Year!

click to enlarge Hand in hand
THE CANARY:

And after last week’s mess at the U.S. Capitol where five people died, and another extremely “unprecedented” thing happened, I’m thinking about flying south for more than just the winter. Are we really “surprised”? And did we really need U.S. Rep. Salud Carbajal to tell us he thought soon to be ex-President Donald Trump was total trash after the disorganized chaotic gang of mobsters/protesters/rioters/insurrectionists/terrorists (I really don’t know what to call them) smashed their way into the Capitol building on Jan. 6? We already know how you feel, Salud. You’ve been telling us for four years, but I forgive you and am definitely glad you’re OK! 

What did shock me were the words that came from Assemblymember Jordan Cunningham via a Facebook post. He actually condemned something that conservatives (albeit crazy right-wing ones) perpetuated! The Republican who successfully pretends to be more moderate called the actions “disgraceful acts of political violence.” Although, he didn’t explicitly call out the man at the head of his party (tRump), which disappointed me, but again—I’m not surprised! 

“Our democratic institutions are stronger than any one person, or any one election result,” Cunningham said. “I implore everyone involved to remember that they are Americans, first and foremost.” 

Yeah, we’re American! Home of the brave and the stupid. 

As COVID-19 cases soar to new highs in every successive week, I wonder how America can handle itself when it feels so separated. It’s depressing, honestly, how much we despise the other and want to shout it from the rooftops—or, I guess, Twitter will do just fine. We deserve each other.

As Santa Barbara County stretches itself to vaccinate just 5,000 county residents by the end of January, I also wonder why the hell we can’t do things more efficiently and expeditiously. That’s only 1 percent of the county population. 

Why is it that we haven’t built up the infrastructure that allows children to attend in-person schools during the pandemic? Teachers need vaccinations, which we haven’t figured out yet, but we also need to be able to COVID test our children. As Santa Maria-Bonita School District spokesperson Maggie White puts it, they would need to be able to complete 20,000 tests every week, as required by the state. 

“There’s just not a procedure in our community for that at this point,” she said. 

After 10 months of pandemic, you’d think our state and local public health departments would have figured out how to make that procedure a reality by now, considering how far behind students are due to virtual learning struggles. If we had made it a priority, the Santa Maria Joint Union School District wouldn’t have to figure out how ensure that half of its students don’t fail classes in the 2020-21 school year. 

But at least we have each other, right? Santa Barbara County 5th District Supervisor Steve Lavagnino now has recently sworn in 4th District Supervisor Bob Nelson to watch meetings with “hand in hand” from the dais. Oops. Not hand in hand. It’s not like that! 

They will happily sit 6 feet a part.

The Canary is down to hold hands. Send comments to [email protected]

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