Saturday, August 1, 2020

Post Rain Flowering and General Stuff

We were up and out this morning, I can't say it was before it got hot, because it wasn't.  That beauteous cloud cover you see dissipated rapidly and so we had the merciless sun boring holes into our flesh.  Did I mention it was hot?


This is another mammalaria next to a trail.  The sun was pretty harsh by the time I took the picture.


 This is the same pictures as yesterday, I really like it a lot, so here it is again.



The trichocereus are blooming again.  I would not have predicted this because they put on quite the bloom in the spring.  However, there are many blooming and they are just spectacular.


This is some kind of sage next door.  It's an enormous plant that needs to be trimmed.  It usually blooms in the spring, but here it is mid-summer putting out a spectacular show.


The new plant spike.  The flowers are kind of under whelming, but I like this photo because I got depth of field to work.


So, there you are.  Happy pictures of blooming things.

Have you read the Vanity Fair article on Kushner's testing plan?  It was actually adequate.  The plan called for national leadership, surging supplies to hot spots and not making governors compete for scarce resources.  Then it went pouf.  This is why.
Most troubling of all, perhaps, was a sentiment the expert said a member of Kushner’s team expressed: that because the virus had hit blue states hardest, a national plan was unnecessary and would not make sense politically. “The political folks believed that because it was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy,” said the expert.
FEMA is still confiscating PPE and cleaning supplies from school systems and giving it to PPE vendors, who then sell it back to the schools at inflated pricing.  I believe this is called profiteering.  There is a special place in hell for those people.

For those of you who are indifferent to Oprah, I wanted to show you this.  She's been publishing O for twenty some odd years, and Oprah has always been on the cover, until this one. I hope it aids the effort to convict the police that killed her.


Yesterday on Air Force One, the orange wombat announced that he was going to sign an executive order banning Tik Tok.  I think he's still mad that the Tik Tok teenagers punked him on the expected crowd size in Tulsa.  They were anticipating record turn outs, and got about 6,000 people.  Already the kids have viral stuff up about moving their addresses (I have no idea which ones) to Canada and something about VPNs and they'll still be up on the platform.  Sarah Cooper does not always use Tik Tok so she will continue to be able to mock the wombat.



And finally, if you need help with your upcoming vacation planning, here are the places you can't go.



I don't want to lose the link to Representative John Lewis' final op-ed so I am putting it here.

5 comments:

  1. I think Trump believes that Tik Tok is somehow a tool of the Chinese government, and I'm sure he thinks the Chinese are responsible for the low turnout at his rally. When in doubt, blame the Chinese.

    That quote from the Vanity Fair article is appalling. Don't you wonder why someone in that room didn't stand up and say, "These are people's LIVES! We're not playing party politics with them!" But of course that would require a shred of human decency.

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  2. gorgeous cactus. and I really like the last photo of the plant spike.

    I saw that tweet by Steve Schmidt. I even read it out loud to my husband so we both got a laugh out of it. Trump is such a vindictive crybaby. That whole family is despicable and they attract despicable people. who else could stand to be around them?

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  3. It's nice to see all those wonderful blooms. We aren't getting them up here. I don't think we've had enough rain to coax any blooms out of the plants. Good for Oprah for that cover! I did hear about the Vanity Fair article but I haven't read it yet. It looks like we Americans are pretty unwelcome just about everywhere.

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  4. I have seen that Oprah cover all over Twitter, but it didn't register with me until you mentioned it that it's a first, as Oprah has always been on the cover. Glad you pointed that out.

    That CNN screen capture adds to my very bad mood.

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  5. This is such a richly informative post, with some lovely photos of your stomping ground. That world photo, showing where we are not welcome, is stunning. I hadn't really understood that we are personae non grata across the entire world. Makes sense though. You were the first person to introduce me to Sarah Cooper. I think she's simply awesome.

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