Orlando Fire Station Built to Promote Diversity

A New "Outpost Nine" has been built in the Rosemont community of Orlando, a new home to 30 firefighters. The new building has private bunk rooms and restrooms for crews and includes a secure room for female firefighters. 

Fire Chief Benjamin Barksdale said the fire station was designed to promote diversity within the fire department as part of the “Inclusivity and Equity Action Plan.”

“The old-style fire station was what we call our community sleeping area and it provided no

 privacy at all and it was very challenging for women and other genders as well,” Barksdale said.

https://www.clickorlando.com/news/local/2021/02/23/orlando-fire-department-opens-new-fire-station-designed-to-promote-diversity/#//

Lesbian and Heterosexual Professional Soccer Moms Given Equal Billing

In a USA Today post, heterosexual as well as lesbian mothers are celebrated, and adoptive and birth mothers. 

Two-time World Cup champions Ashlyn Harris and Ali Krieger announced on February 14 that they had adopted a daughter, Sloane Phillips, born two days earlier. 

The article also stated that the teammate Alex Morgan birthed a daughter Charlie in May. 

Times have changed much for the better when a mom is a mom.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/soccer/2021/02/24/shebelieves-cup-megan-rapinoe-acts-greeter-newest-uswnt-member/6810141002/

Diversity in USPS Vehicles

 You have to hand it to the United States Postal Service. They like diversity in vehicles. 

                                      

Not much like any other vehicle on the road, the new trucks are like a minivan, but is designed to lessen the effects of hitting pedestrians, should a person find her/him/themself in the way of postal delivery. And they will be built in Wisconsin. 

https://www.curbed.com/2021/02/usps-new-truck-design-safety.html

COVID cases down, is it because Trump is gone?

Has it occurred to anyone else that the recent drops in COVID cases and deaths could be due to the absence of Trump mania taking over this country? In order to be loyal to their savior and their king, Trump supporters had to demonstrate that they did not believe in wearing masks and social distancing. Maybe since he is not out there encouraging the troops, there is less reason to be so adamant. 

Maybe it is more true than we think that Trump's parting is saving a lot of lives.

Keeping Hierarchies Intact More Important than Democracy

Longtime Republican strategist and Lincoln Project co-founder Steve Schmidt warned that America is in a dangerous hour stating that president Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the election result “was a failed coup” that would result in him attempting another.  

Slamming the attorney generals of the 18 red states who joined Texas in the lawsuit before the Supreme Court, Mr Schmidt said: “What happened in the month of November premeditatedly, deliberately, faith and belief in American democracy was poisoned by President Trump, culminating with 126 members of the House of Representatives and 18 Republicans attorney generals signing an amicus brief to a garbage lawsuit that is, in essence, a declaration of repudiation of American democracy.” 

Republicans that support Trump's effort to overturn democracy in the United States obviously believe that keeping themselves on top of our nation's hierarchies is much more important than the democracy towards which the country professes to aspire. 

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/steve-schmidt-lincoln-project-trump-election-b1774749.html

Top of the Hierarchy Wants Clemency Others Don't Get

Outgoing President Donald Trump is becoming flooded with requests for clemency from his closest business associates and high-profile criminals.  

Since Trump lost the election six weeks ago, calls and emails have been flooding into the West Wing from people looking to benefit from the President's powers of clemency. So inundated is Trump's staff with requests for pardons or commutations that a spreadsheet has been created to keep track of the requests directed to Trump's close aides. More swamp flooding the White House.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/16/politics/donald-trump-pardons-lame-duck/index.html

Negro Baseball Leagues Gaining Deserved Recognition by MLB

Major League Baseball's books record books will be changed after MLB announced that it is reclassifying the Negro Leagues as a major league.

MLB said Wednesday that it was "correcting a longtime oversight in the game's history" by elevating the Negro Leagues on the centennial of their founding. The Negro Leagues consisted of seven leagues, and MLB will include records from those circuits between 1920 and 1948. The Negro Leagues began to dissolve one year after Jackie Robinson became MLB's first Black player with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947.

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/30531397/mlb-reclassifies-negro-leagues-major-league