Blooming Almonds at Dawn
Almond trees blooming at dawn February 24, 2017
Comment of the Day
gregjones
taiwan 3 hours ago
Within a week the House wll vote to repeal the ACA. Using reconciliation it is quite possible that the Senate will be able to complete that process by the summer. I am 55, unemployed and suffering from congestive heart failure. With the ACA I am able to get health care, without it tax credits where I don’t pay taxes on non-existent income is not going to buy insurance that would cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars anyway. Without health care I will probably die over the next year while your friends applaud the repeal. They will hear about people like me but they wont let it bother them. Some of them are on disability, which I rejected so I could continue to look for a teaching job, but your friends wont let that bother them as they cash their government check. Now I don’t know about you but I tend to think that I owe little to those whose votes led to my death. Forgive my condescension.
Tree in Bloom at Dawn
Tree in bloom at dawn, February 23, 2017.
View From the End of My Driveway
View from the end of my driveway.
Almond Trees in Full Bloom on a Rainy Day
Almond Trees in Bloom on a Rainy Morning
Almond trees in bloom on a rainy morning.
Blooming almonds near sunset
Blooming almonds near sunset.
The Gravest Crisis Democracy Has Ever Faced
This is a photograph of almond trees starting to bloom at dawn on a rainy day because there are no words adequate to describe the profundity of the democratic crisis our country is now experiencing.
Every Nation Gets the Government it Deserves
“Every nation gets the government it deserves.” Joseph Le Maistre, 1811
This saying should be taken literally in this country. We have elected Republican politicians to run our Presidency, our Senate, our House, and the majority of our state governments. Unfortunately, Republican governing principles are self-contradictory and are aimed at the destruction of functional government.
The extreme nature of these governing principles should be apparent since January 20 of this year, if not before. Less than a month of Trumpian governance has resulted in the effective paralysis of executive government. The people deserve to suffer greatly for their neglect of participation in democracy.
The only rational solution, other than extreme resistance to all governmental activities, is to avoid any reference to anything having to do with the current government.
Here’s a direct quote from CNN; I don’t know how I could say it any better:
Washington (CNN)Rep. Tom Price last year purchased shares in a medical device manufacturer days before introducing legislation that would have directly benefited the company, raising new ethics concerns for President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for Health and Human Services secretary.
Price bought between $1,001 to $15,000 worth of shares last March in Zimmer Biomet, according to House records reviewed by CNN.Less than a week after the transaction, the Georgia Republican congressman introduced the HIP Act, legislation that would have delayed until 2018 a Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) regulation that industry analysts warned would significantly hurt Zimmer Biomet financially once fully implemented.Zimmer Biomet, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of knee and hip implants, was one of two companies that would have been hit the hardest by the new CMS regulation that directly impacts the payments for such procedures, according to press reports and congressional sources.After Price offered his bill to provide Zimmer Biomet and other companies relief from the CMS regulation, the company’s political action committee donated to the congressman’s reelection campaign, records show.
