The Elephant in the Room

Nature 3 Minutes

Elephants are amazing creatures! They are the largest living land animals on earth and have the largest brain in the animal kingdom! They hear and communicate by foot stomping, and creating a low-frequency rumble that generates seismic waves in the ground that can travel nearly 20 miles. The sensitive skin in an elephant’s trunk and feet helps them to pick up the message, and interpret them as a warning, or distant danger.

There are three recognized species of elephants – The African bush elephant (also known as the Savanna elephant), the African forest elephant and the Asian elephant.

The African elephants used to be considered one species, until genetic studies concluded that they were separated between 2-7 million years ago.

African elephants are typically significantly larger than their Asian elephant cousins, with bulls growing up to 13 feet tall and weigh between 4,000-7,500 kg, while Asian elephants reach no more than 11.5 feet, and weigh less, between 3000-6,000 kg.

African elephants ears are larger, and reach up and cover the neck, while their skin is also more wrinkled. Asian elephants have a twin-domed head with an indent in the middle (known as ‘dorsal bumps’), whereas African elephants have fuller, more rounded heads. African elephants also have concave backs, while Asian elephants have convex or level backs.

The African elephant is on the left, in comparison to the Asian elephant, on the right.

Both female and male African elephants have tusks, but only male Asian elephants do. An elephants tusks are used for digging, debarking trees, moving trees and branches when clearing a path and for attacking and defending when fighting. By raising the tips of their trunks above the water’s surface, elephants can cross rivers totally submerged walking on the river bed–their very own snorkel!

Elephants form deep, intimate family bonds and live in groups, known as a herd. These herds have a matriarchal head, which means the oldest, and usually largest, female in the group will lead the herd. She is referred to as the matriarch. A family usually includes the mother, her sisters, daughters and their babies.

The size of the herd will depend entirely on the size of the family and the terrain they have chosen to live on. Normally a herd of elephants can number between 8 and 100, however there have been recorded aggregations of up to 1,000 around watering holes.

The entire matriarchal herd will protect a newborn calf, and help to raise it. Males have a very different behavior pattern. They usually leave the herd between the ages of 12 and 15 after reaching puberty. Males who have left the family unit will either live temporarily with other males, or may just be alone for the rest of their lives. Even after pursuing and selecting a female mate, a male elephant will then resume his predominantly nomadic and solitary life, to roam alone.

elephant matriarch leading her herd

Female elephants have the longest pregnancies of any mammal at 22 months and give birth to huge babies. The average newborn calf will weigh between 200-250 pounds! Thankfully, the average birth is a single calf but although twins are rare, they do occur occasionally.

An elephant’s skin is very thick–about an inch thick–and although it’s tough, it’s also very sensitive! Elephants love mud baths–which they use as sunscreen for protection–and dust baths which they use to remove parasites.

Elephants will show affection to other members of their herd by stroking their heads or backs with their trunks to console or comfort them. If an elephant herd comes across a pile of elephant bones, they will stop and touch the bones with their trunks, and stay there for a long while. Are they grieving? Showing respect? They do not exhibit the same behavior with the bones of other animals.

But one the most interesting facts I discovered about elephants is this: They are afraid of bees! Imagine!

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Published by pat frederick

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152 thoughts on “The Elephant in the Room”

  1. Morning All!
    well, the sun is shining…so there’s that. But all last evening we were fighting with the orioles to stay off the hummer feeder we left out. the robins were joining in our fight and we wondered why–till hubby found a robin’s nest on the logs ends at the back of the house…he quickly dispatched that! and there seems to be only one hummer so far–but he flew after the oriole too!

    Liked by 2 people

      1. Morning Filly!
        gosh, we watched Smokey & the Bandit 2…they’re transporting a pregnant elephant…her eyes are so soulful and expressive!!

        Liked by 2 people

        1. I haven’t seen part 2 – loved the first one, tho. Of course, Sally Field was my doppelganger so I’ve always been a fan since way back when. I watch a lot of the zoo programs, too, and loved watching one being born.

          Liked by 2 people

  6. judge agrees with Florida that illegals MUST be detained until proceedings are thru–not let them in first and then try to detain or have a hearing…
    FTA
    Here, the primary statutory provisions at issue are §§1225(b)(1)(B)(iii)(IV) and (b)(2)(A) and §1182(d)(5)(A). Defendants argues that §1225 affords it broad enforcement discretion to establish policies and priorities, including the option to decline to institute removal proceedings at all. Florida responds that the cited provisions of §1225 expressly require aliens to be detained until removal proceedings have concluded, and that §1182(d)(5)(A) does not authorize Defendants to circumvent the mandatory detention requirement as it is allegedly doing through the challenged policies. The Court agrees with Florida. [Emphasis added]

    The cited provisions in §1225 clearly and unambiguously state that aliens arriving at the border “shall be detained,” not that they may be detained. The word “shall” connotes a requirement or a command, rather than a suggestion or an opportunity for the exercise of discretion. The Supreme Court reached the same conclusion in Jennings when it stated that “§§1225(b)(1) and (b)(2) do not use the word ‘may’ [and] [i]nstead, they unequivocally mandate that aliens falling within their scope ‘shall’ be detained.” [Emphasis added]

    https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/05/06/trump-appointed-judge-refuses-to-dismiss-lawsuit-against-bidens-mass-release-of-illegal-aliens-into-u-s/

    Like

  9. Barnette surging in PA polls…while oz is stalling…
    FTA
    “Listen, go to my Facebook page by Kathy Barnett for Senate and you will see exactly what I’m doing today that I will amp up tomorrow after this race. You will see me in rooms full of black people changing their voter registration from Democrat to Republican, you will see me downtown and Chinatown. They are mine. You will see people ushering me in front of a roomful of Amish people with them introducing me as someone with their values.”

    “Not only do I have a grasp on our own base, but I can go into every nook and cranny and take the votes that we need in order to really be better than in the general election. So, let’s go do this.” Barnette received a massive round of applause after the remarks.

    https://thepostmillennial.com/breaking-kathy-barnette-surges-in-pa-primary-polling-as-dr-oz-stumbles

    Liked by 1 person

  10. Entire article: “British Girl Gets Trapped In Thailand Tsunami

    Amber was riding Ning Nong the elephant along the beach when the devastating tsunami struck. In her own words: “The elephants carried us along the beach and into the sea. I grew especially fond of Ning Nong, a four-year-old, and would feed him bananas every morning. He would wrap his trunk around my shoulders and nuzzle me… Early on the morning of the tsunami, there was a small earthquake , but we didn’t think much about it. I was riding along the beach after breakfast and I could tell he was anxious. He kept turning away from the sea. As he edged inland, a huge wave rushed up to his shoulders. (See: Elephant Stops For A Child.)

    Ning Nong Takes Amber To Safety

    Amber clung to the back of the elephant, fearful the waves, which were getting higher by the second, would engulf them both. People were slipping under the waves everywhere about her, and Ning Nong kept pulling away from the sea, and used his animal instincts to transport Amber to safety. When Amber’s mother, Samantha, heard screams, she panicked and ran down to the beach. She could not find her daughter or Ning Nong because the elephant transported the pair further inland. (See: Hero Giant Rats Save Lives.)

    Heading further inland with Amber on his back, the elephant forced his body forward, wading against the powerful pressure of the relentless current with his shoulders. He climbed up the beach and continued along until he found a small wall and wedged himself next to a stone shelf that was wide enough for Amber to scramble onto. At this point, her mother found them both, grabbed Amber and returned to their first floor room barely ten minutes before the next wave hit and swept away two rooms on the same floor! (See: Gorilla Saves Little Boy.)

    Ning Nong’s Fate Is Unknown

    Amber doesn’t know what happened to the elephant, but believes that the incident completely altered her life’s perspective. She Said: “He saved my life and he carried me to safety. I will always be grateful and it made me more appreciative of life. It taught me at a very young age that terrible things can happen in an instant and life can be changed forever.” Her mother also shows gratitude to brave Ning Nong by sending money every year for the upkeep of Phuket’s elephants. (See: Pride of Lions Save Kidnapped Ethiopian Girl.)

    Art Imitates Life And Inspires Hope
    Amber’s incredible story has been adapted unto a book and then a play by Michel Morpurgo called: Running Wild, a fantasy woven around this tale of survival against all odds.

    Here’s to the bravery of Ning Nong.

    Good job!

    http://petslady.com/article/elephant-saves-young-girl-thailand-tsunami

    Liked by 2 people

  11. EXCERPT: “Elephant family units are exceptional. Once a mother gives birth (after a 22-month pregnancy), she will raise her baby alongside siblings, aunts and grandparents. While males leave the herd between the ages of 12 and 15 for a relatively solitary life, females live out their lives alongside their mothers and other relatives.

    Leaving a baby behind is not something an elephant takes lightly.

    “But hope was not lost,” the organization shared on Facebook. “In a swift, choreographed motion, the team ran over and pulled the infant out of the trough and from there, shepherded it over in the direction of its mother, who was cautiously waiting nearby. After inspecting her baby, the mother gave her calf’s rescuers a long look and let out a single trumpet, as if thanking them, before moving on with her young one. A family reunited and a dynasty on the plains of Tsavo continued!”

    https://www.simplemost.com/elephant-mom-thanks-rescuers-saving-child/

    Liked by 2 people

  12. emerald was right about being able to track who has had the cv shots using luciferase…the mark of the beast

    FTA
    I Was Right About Luciferase
    Dr. Ralph Baric used Luciferase to track mRNA according to NIH website

    Emerald Robinson
    8 hr ago

    125
    16

    On May 5th, the world-renowned COVID specialist Dr. Vladimir Zev Zelenko sent out the following message from his personal account on Gettr: “Dr. Baric uses luciferase enzyme, which fluoresceses under black light, as a method to confirm that mRNA is being produced. In other words, this technology can be used to ascertain if someone is vaccinated.”

    In other words, Dr. Zelenko drew attention to the fact that Dr. Ralph Baric had confirmed the use of Luciferase to track and report mRNA transcription in a medical paper on the NIH website.

    https://emeralddb3.substack.com/p/i-was-right-about-luciferase

    Liked by 2 people

      1. i can see that…but if ukraine is in the middle of a war and is being bombed like the stories report…how secure can it be to send in a flotus?
        see the stories don’t jive

        Liked by 2 people

  15. more kathy barnette

    Liked by 2 people

  17. Well, my Orioles have arrived – I put out some grape jelly and made some nectar. Had the patio doors open ’cause it’s so warm – 72 already!!!! They have a distinctive call that you can’t miss. There were 2 males looking for the jelly/nectar. The nectar is too hot yet but the grape jelly should make them happy.

    Liked by 2 people

          1. Well, if I’d get my water softener system going again…..but I had SIL shut it down a few years ago – the dripping of the overflow tube was driving me nuts! I didn’t know then how bad the water is here. Now the pellets I used have solidified – they have to be chipped out and removed before I can bring it back on-line. It’s so hard, I’ll have to use a crow-bar! I’m waiting until I can afford to pay someone to do it for me. LOL

            Liked by 2 people

            2. My old one in MD did that too. Replaced the whole system just before selling the house. The old salt tank was super heavy with all that hardened salt in it…pain in the rear taking it to the county dump!

              Liked by 2 people

              1. I had Dick look at it and he said it could be brought back on-line after I get it all out. He also warned me not to throw it in the grass since it will kill it. If, and when, I do get it done, I’ll throw it on my driveway in back to kill the weeds since the stuff I used last year didn’t work. Full of dandelions!

                Liked by 2 people

          1. I have 2 containers I use – one for Orioles and one for Hummers, since they like different amounts of sugar. I put the sugar in the container, pour in the hot water, shake it up until it dissolves and refrigerate it. I put the container today in the freezer for a bit so it would cool off faster.

            Liked by 2 people

          2. wow…I mix sugar with tap water (well water) and that’s it…easy peasy…
            maybe my hummers are rednecks who can drink it raw

            Liked by 1 person

  19. FFS! Fox has Piers Morgan on! Time to change the channel – I’ll go with Maria, thank you very much! It’s either that or Newsmax and I really despise them so……least of the evils at this point and still be able to keep up with any breaking news.

    Liked by 1 person

  20. EXCERPT: “Utah public health officials were warned that allocating COVID drugs based on race violated federal law, but did so anyway with the backing of the Biden administration, emails and documents obtained by the Washington Free Beacon show.

    Utah’s points-based system for prioritizing COVID patients, which allocated more points for being non-white than for having congestive heart failure, troubled two law professors specializing in bioethics. They informed the doctors who designed the system in September 2021 that it was probably illegal.

    “The use of non-white race really set off alarm bells,” Teneille Brown, a professor at the University of Utah’s S.J. Quinney College of Law, said in an email. The “consensus among legal academics,” Brown’s colleague Leslie Francis added, is that a system like Utah’s would “violate federal law.”

    This piece is based on materials obtained via a third-party public records request and shared with the Free Beacon.

    The doctors Brown and Francis emailed were part of the state’s Crisis Standards of Care workgroup, assembled by the Utah Hospital Association at the behest of the health department. When COVID surged in November 2020, the health department asked the group to develop a system for allocating scarce therapies. The group conceded its approach hadn’t been “reviewed legally.” But, they assured the law professors, it did have the blessing of the Biden administration.

    The Department of Health and Human Services “has lauded our approach,” said Mark Shah, the director of Utah’s Disaster Medical Assistance Team and a member of the group. In February 2021, Shah’s colleague Brandon Webb presented the race-based allocation system to HHS, according to power point slides reviewed by the Free Beacon. HHS subsequently listed the system as a “promising practice” for other states to consider.

    Such race-conscious policies proliferated throughout the pandemic, sparking both moral outrage and legal scrutiny. Like Utah, Minnesota and New York prioritized non-white residents for moncolonal antibodies. Vermont did the same for vaccines. Some states, including Utah and Minnesota, scrapped their policies in the wake of political backlash—and amid threats of legal action from conservative nonprofits.

    The emails suggest Utah was ground zero for many of these schemes. The state initially defended its system by invoking guidance from the Food and Drug Administration, which lists race as a risk factor that can qualify patients for monoclonal antibodies. But according to the emails, it was Utah that inspired that guidance in the first place.

    “The FDA reviewed our Utah Risk Score and used it as precedent for including ‘race and other risk factors’ as qualifiers,” Shah told the group in June 2021. Minnesota in turn used that precedent to justify its own allocation system.”

    https://freebeacon.com/coronavirus/utah-was-warned-racial-rationing-of-covid-drugs-was-illegal-it-did-it-anyway/

    Liked by 2 people

  21. EXCERPT: “A group of Republican state attorneys general this week withdrew from the National Association of Attorneys General, a move that signals growing frustration with an increasingly progressive bent in law enforcement.

    The attorneys general of Texas, Missouri, and Montana cited NAAG’s “intolerable” leftward shift as their reason for leaving. In recent months, the group has pushed efforts to isolate conservative “misinformation” in social media and featured left-wing mega donor Tom Steyer’s brother as a keynote speaker. NAAG has also featured speakers from the Southern Poverty Law Center, which routinely brands conservative organizations as hate groups.

    The move signals Republican prosecutors’ growing resolve to confront left-wing ideology in major legal institutions. It’s a frustration that encompasses the woke takeover of top law schools like Yale, attacks on law enforcement, and the liberal bent of their own career staff.

    “The association’s leftward shift over the past half decade has become intolerable. Indeed, this liberal bent has fundamentally undermined NAAG’s role as a nonpartisan national forum,” Texas attorney general Ken Paxton (R.) wrote in a resignation letter, which Missouri attorney general Eric Schmitt (R.) and Montana attorney general Austin Knudsen (R.) cosigned. “We can no longer spend our taxpayers’ money to sustain our membership with NAAG under these circumstances.”

    In March, the Washington Free Beacon reported that Republican lawyers were disgruntled with woke programming at NAAG conferences as well as the organization’s approach to consumer protection issues. And in April, the Free Beacon revealed that NAAG planned to quiet critics by hiring a Republican as its new executive director—while positioning a young Democrat to succeed him in short order.

    Wednesday’s defections represent $200,000 in annual dues to the organization. NAAG’s annual operating budget is about $5.1 million, according to internal financial documents obtained by the Free Beacon. Annual membership dues account for $3.2 million, or about 60 percent of the operating budget. The group faces an existential threat if other red states follow suit.”

    https://freebeacon.com/democrats/republican-ags-battle-woke-law-enforcement/

    Liked by 2 people

  23. EXCERPT: “On Mother’s Day, the New York Post ran an article bearing the title, “Millennial men want 1950s housewives after they have kids.” The article’s text was more nuanced and more predictable: It reviewed a book revealing that millennial men pay lip service to their wives’ careers—and like the money their wives bring home—but also want to have their wives function as full-time mothers and homemakers.

    In 1988, Arlie Hochschild published a groundbreaking book, The Second Shift, about her investigation into dual-career households. She interviewed a range of couples, some who held traditional beliefs about male and female roles within a marriage and some who saw both partners espousing the modern view that said husband and wife both work and share household responsibilities.

    Hochschild’s research revealed that the most progressive husbands, the ones claiming complete equality in the marriage, were creating an elaborate fiction. They often described themselves as responsible for “outside” work, implying it was the same as “inside” work. Their “equal” role in the house amounted to mowing the lawn or taking out the garbage once a week or picking up milk on the way home from work. Meanwhile, their wives, who also held paying jobs, were handling shopping, cooking, cleaning, childcare, and everything else. Ultimately, the wives put in the equivalent of an extra month of work per year.

    Ironically, the husbands who were most helpful around the house were the old-fashioned men who felt that they’d failed when their wives had to work outside the home. Because they placed the most value on the mother/homemaker role, they recognized their wives’ sacrifice in leaving the home for the workplace. The more “modern men,” with their views of equality, saw traditional women’s work as valueless and were unwilling to sully their hands with it or to appreciate the wives for handling those tasks.

    In sum, the modern husbands Hochschild described wanted their wives to be both Ward Cleaver (earning money) and June Cleaver (providing full-time housekeeping and parenting work). For women, this could be an impossible standard, so either the marriage, the job, the household, or the parenting suffered—and sometimes everything suffered simultaneously.

    It turns out nothing has changed. The Post article title implies that Millennial men want to go back to a time when they are Ward and their wives are June: That is, a clear biological gender division of labor that sees the men heading out into the world to bring home the bacon, while his wife raises his children, cleans his house, and welcomes him home with a well-cooked dinner.

    In fact, the article says the something quite different: It turns out that today’s young men, exactly like the young progressive men Hochschild described 34 years ago, want their wives to be both Ward and June:
    ——————–
    The Post article details how young women today are likely to dump their demanding husbands, preferring the demands of the workplace “[A] according to a 2015 study by the American Sociological Association, women initiate 69% of divorces, and among college-educated women, it’s 90%.” Presumably, they figure they’ll be as busy as they were with a husband, but without the feeling that he’s another child for whom they’re responsible.

    Bazelon contends that kids do fine in a single mother household. The Post notes that “Studies show that children of working mothers are just as well adjusted and have no more behavioral problems than their peers.” However, other studies show that children raised by single mothers are more likely to be poor. Bazelon, a lawyer, seems to be looking at a narrow economic stratum. That’s why I question the subtitle of Bazelon’s book: “Why Prioritizing Your Career Is Good For Your Kids.”

    I suspect that the reason those women who prioritize their career get an “A” from Bazelon is summed up when the article states that “working mothers who get divorced report that they are happier.” Well, yes, if the marriage was bad enough to lead to a divorce, the woman is surely happier without her husband. And because women set the emotional tone for a household, a happy mother may well be a better one, even if she has less time for the kids than before.”

    https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/05/millennial_men_want_their_wives_to_be_both_ward_and_june_cleaver.html

    Liked by 1 person

  24. EXCERPT: “For the record, the only people better off in rural America during the reign of Jo’Bama are the Bill Gates billionaires and mysterious Chinese corporations buying up farmland throughout the country. For everyone else, Obamacare’s destruction of rural hospitals, nonsensical Green New Deal diktats, outrageous fuel and feed costs, infrequent yet prohibitively expensive fertilizer shipments, and destabilized supply chains, plus the return of Big Government agricultural regulation and Chinese trade appeasement, have created grim economic times and uncertain futures. In President Trump, farmers had a man who understood their needs and fought for their interests. In President Dementia, farmers have an enfeebled man who has no sympathy for their needs and fights for China’s interests.

    Only two percent of America’s population roll up their sleeves and farm the land, so that everyone else has clothes to wear and food to eat. There are many admirable professions but none so vital as the farmer’s. It’s hard, sweaty work, often providing unpredictable income. When the federal Leviathan insists on imposing its jurisdictional fiats on everything from pesticides to rain puddles, that work gets harder and more unpredictable. When a bunch of know-nothing armchair academics micro-manage what’s going on out here as if Stalin’s Five-Year Plan were back in fashion, then food shortages and price hikes become inevitable. You cannot farm from the comfort of an air-conditioned Georgetown. You cannot feed America by undermining America’s farmers. And if you cannot feed America, what is the point of flexing American muscle over breached borders in Ukraine?

    Farming attracts a certain kind of people — those who are willing to put their fortunes on the line season after season, herd after herd, for uncertain reward. You can do everything right and still suffer the unforgivable fates of pernicious weather and disease. You can work your tail off just to eke by; in fact, when conditions are rough, just eking out a living perversely requires working harder than ever. You can put in a long day’s work, just to discover that your efforts were in vain. You can have a great crop or healthy cattle one day only to find fungus and parasites destroying everything you have the next. If you want to know what the “business of life” is, find a farmer. It takes grit and spit and blood and many days under the hot sun. Snowflakes would melt, and champagne socialists would croak. There’s no time for victims, tantrums, or privilege pity-parties out in rural America.

    Something else that distinguishes rural Americans from the Marxists running D.C. is what you might call the harsh demarcation separating “theory” from “application.” For the bureaucratic “ruling class” squatting near the Potomac, there’s no idea stupid enough that it can’t be retried a dozen times. You would think those elitists most inclined to define themselves through their academic pedigrees would actually learn from historical failures written down in the books they (at least pretend to) have read. Alas, repeating mistakes is Washington’s forte.
    ———————–
    In rural America, something either works or it doesn’t. There’s no wiggle room to repeat the same mistake ten times or theorize why something should have worked “on principle.” There’s not enough room for error to complain to those who depend on your efforts that you “had the best of intentions.” “Hope and change” don’t get a field plowed or a crop harvested. “Build Back Better” is an insult to people who build for a living every single day. “Theory” is a luxury that takes a backseat to serious, hard work and determination. Bureaucrats have never seen a problem they can’t make worse; rural Americans have never seen a problem they don’t expect to fix themselves. There are no excuses. There are no second chances. It’s get-to-work, get-it-fixed, get-‘er-done.
    ———————–
    Yet that’s okay. Because rural Americans are tough and don’t ask for sympathy and always figure out a way to survive, no matter how difficult the next challenge. They’re winners in this life because they know intimately just what a gift life is. They know how to keep getting back up on their own because if they did not, they would be gone. But surely that’s enough of a load for one group of Americans to shoulder without also forcing them to stomach the Democrat party’s biennial attempts to claim that it deserves rural Americans’ votes when Democrats go out of their way between elections to show their absolute hatred for rural America’s voters. For all that rural America does for everyone else, that really shouldn’t be too much to ask.”

    https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/05/why_would_rural_americans_vote_for_those_who_hate_them.html

    Liked by 1 person

  25. Nice to see she didn’t use the word “Democratic!” “And for working their hearts out doing the dirty jobs that white-collared empty suits demean and ignore, rural Americans receive nothing but mockery and derision from the Democrat party.”

    Liked by 1 person

  26. ok, laundry’s done. now i gotta do a mini banana run–we were too tired yesterday on the way home to stop at walmart–plus there wasn’t any room in the truck! LOL
    gonna check out the little feed and seed store next to the market to see if they have an oriole feeder…hubby thinks he can run a wire to one of the nearer trees to the railing and we can dangle the feeder from that…we’ll see…
    BBS

    Liked by 1 person

    1. well that was a short trip…drove 30 feet from the garage and my check engine came on…so I backed up–my least favorite thing to do! into the garage…hubby’s gonna follow me to the garage in the next town over to see what he thinks at lunch time.
      sigh

      Liked by 1 person

  27. EXCERPT: “This free-falling into a new America is becoming increasingly unlivable. For anyone over a certain age, this America, this culture, this society have become beyond foreign. It is not the country we grew up in and it is not the country we want to die in. It is alien. The obsession over hyper individualism is turning surreal. But then, is it not inevitable? Are these not the seeds planted of our own destruction? There is a reason our Founding Fathers agonized about what would happen with freedom in a society without virtue.

    So, where do we go and what will we become?

    The country is still out there, that America that we remember, the one that was proud and strong, but also assured, humble — the one that embodied a quiet patriotism that didn’t need boasting and the over-the-top half-time shows and fly-bys and millions in ad spends. We rightly hesitated at the thought of Empire, of marching off to endless wars. Our love of nation just was, it was in our blood, in our quiet demeanor. We knew who we were.
    ———————–
    How do we recover what has been lost, or is that a fool’s errand? For time in its continuum races forward, the need, the urge and desire to pull it back to retreat, is nothing but a dream turned into a saddening nostalgia, bitter torn and tears and lost remembrances.

    Beware of old photos, they are just a snapshot, made to fool us into a false sense of what was. I glance at two old photos, one of Van Nuys Boulevard and another of a shopping area in Panorama City, both parts of the San Fernando Valley, in the city of Los Angeles. The photos are over a half century old, they bespeak of a long-ago part of America, one idyllic, flawed maybe, but simple, a different time and era, but they speak of something.

    Again, that nostalgia, it can fool us, but drive down those streets today, Van Nuys or Roscoe Boulevard, one sees in block after block, a cesspool of drugs, graffiti, homeless encampments, boarded up stores and rampant crime.

    It speaks of thousands of streets and towns across this country, the fallen, the despair, the hopelessness. Do we not care, does it not mean anything to see America turn into a third world country?
    ————————
    I see myself in my aging years seeing this America race by, sitting on a porch, wondering how we let it all go. Again, maybe it was all inevitable. Too many forces against us, globalization and greed allowed for the destruction of the American heartland and industrial base. Our love and embracing of radical individualism, once the source of such greatness in the building of the American spirit, has run rampant, the community and family are dissolving, the churches are emptying, we “identify” as whatever or whomever we please. We celebrate our own destruction.

    The leaves fall gently, golds and reds and vibrant colors downward settle as the sun recedes in the west, the eastern sky turns dark, and evening comes on, in all its quietness and relief of a long Autumn day, the last days of Indian Summer fall backwards, into a past that yearns and pulls at my heart.

    I become that old man, that character from a Wendall Berry novel in Port William that looks past and beyond, gazing downward for the longest time, lamenting what has been lost.

    And praying for the coming generations, that they may recover that which was our greatness.”

    https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/05/recovering_america.html

    Liked by 2 people

    1. participation trophys overtook actual accomplishments. i don’t need to try harder to be the best–I get a trophy for showing up–not giving it my all–so why go the extra mile. we award mediocracy.

      Liked by 2 people

  28. EXCERPT: “I am a 56-year-old woman who has had two abortions and zero living children. I have never celebrated this, and have rarely admitted it.

    I have been pro-choice most of my adult life. Like all women my age, I grew up in the midst of the Roe vs. Wade battle. And like many women my age I was fully indoctrinated into the belief of “my body, my choice” and the idea that a conception wasn’t really the formation of a new, unique, and soon-to-be separate human life, despite the fact that I was raised Catholic.

    Honesty dictates that I state clearly that I both do and do not regret my choices. So far. Honesty also dictates that I am now pro-life.

    It has been a nearly thirty-year journey to get here. Advances in ultrasound technology aside, though that has been a factor, it is maturity that has ultimately led me to this place. I will never have children to love or to love me, nor grandchildren. I will always be on the outside looking in at all of those around me who have both, and some even great-grandchildren.

    I, of my own free will, murdered two human beings. Flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood. I am not religious, but I am realistic. One day, these young women screaming for abortion may be where I am now. I feel sorry for them. What bothers me most is the one thing so rarely addressed in this entire debate: agency. These women screaming for their “rights” have forgotten the one truly important right that they have, the ability to keep their legs crossed.

    Yes, there are cases of rape and incest that have always been exceptions, but that’s not what we have been hearing about. What we have been hearing about is the idea that under any circumstances, abortion on-demand, at any stage, is righteous, should be celebrated and enshrined as noble, and any dissent is worthy of scorn.

    But let’s get back to keeping an aspirin between one’s knees. Ladies, you are drowning in an ocean of cognitive dissonance. If you engage in consensual sex during your fertile years, pregnancy is always a choice that you affirmatively made. (Men, this applies to you too.) Every. Single. Time. Birth control is never 100% effective, only abstinence is 100% effective. This is where your true power lies (female or male, believe it or not!).”

    Once upon a time we knew this, as women (men knew it too). Once upon a time we understood that the right to say no was a powerful motivator for men and women to found families. First birth control, and then legal abortion, twisted that dynamic, and none of us are the better for it. You want real fulfillment in your lives, ladies? Learn that two letters have more power than all the abortion providers, pills, etc. combined. You might even find a real man (or woman) that way, one who will support you, love you, and help you raise the children you bring forth together.

    Learn the power of NO. And when you’re ready for yes, first make a life with a devoted man, then have your babies and love them like life itself, for they are life, a life you and only you can give. Even if a devoted man is not part of the picture, choose life. If you extinguish life, you can never, ever, take it back, and one day it may just haunt you a little (or a lot).”

    https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/05/the_power_of_no.html

    Liked by 1 person

  29. This was posted yesterday, presumably before True the Vote said they are going to “pull the rip-cord” and put it ALL out there.

    EXCERPT: “As for me, I’ve long felt that Biden could only have attained the White House through fraud, for the reasons mentioned above, so the evidence True the Vote gathered merely confirmed my suspicions. However, I was left with two questions.

    The first was which left-wing organizations made the fraud happen. The movie never names them, presumably because they are being investigated or because D’Souza wants to avoid a defamation suit. Both are good reasons but not identifying them diminished the movie a little.

    Second, and more importantly, the movie failed to explain what happened the night of the election. As best as I could tell (and I could be completely wrong about this), the mules were operating for days or even weeks before the election—as opposed to frantic drop box fraud the night of the election itself. Assuming my version of events, on the night of the election, in all the jurisdictions in which the mules were at work, Trump had a compelling lead as of 11 at night. And then, in each of those jurisdictions, something happened that had never happened before: The counting stopped.

    When it resumed, Biden was magically in the lead. Did the mules affect those numbers too? Or was it the case that, even with help from the mules, the numbers still didn’t add up for Biden, so the Democrats had to go to Plan B?

    (By the way, AP immediately “fact checked” the movie. I didn’t find the “fact check” compelling because it ignored something important: True the Vote didn’t just look at people who repeatedly went near a drop box. As the movie carefully explained, it also made sure that the people repeatedly went to leftist non-profits and visited multiple drop boxes. It is a frantic, angry, aggressive, and incomplete “fact check.” In other words, just what you’d expect from AP.)”

    https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/05/the_riveting_2000_mules_proves_there_was_massive_election_fraud.html

    Liked by 2 people

  33. EXCERPT: “President Joe Biden is importing many refugees who are too poor and unskilled to afford decent housing, according to media reports. At least 100 Afghan refugee families who were dropped off in California are still living in hotels, according to a May 8 report in Spectrum News 1.

    “The problem with housing is that … they need credit,” [aid worker Mahmood] Omid told Spectrum News 1. “They also need someone to have income, to work here and to provide the required document,” he said May 8. “In Southern California’s tight rental market, finding permanent, affordable housing for Afghan families is still proving difficult months later,” said an April 13 report by LAist.com, adding:

    “Among the families that IILA [International Institute of Los Angeles] received and placed into our community, we have between 75 and 80 families who are still in hotels,” [Lillian] Alba said, adding that most of these families are in L.A. County.

    […]

    “We’ve had landlords request six months of rent up front, so we’ve had families who were asked to come up with $30,000 dollars so they could move in,” Alba said. If Congress delivers more migrants, “We just will not have the capacity to provide the adequate support that the families will need,” Alba predicted.

    But the 70,000 Afghans, plus the expected 100,000 Ukrainians — alongside the inflow of Haitians, Cubans, South Americans, Central Americans, and Africans — are also helping to worsen housing shortages. In turn, the shortages bid up housing costs for Americans — and generate extra wealth for landlords and real estate investors.

    In many cases, several or many low-income migrants share an apartment or house, so allowing them to price middle-class American families out of good housing. “Rents continue to rise at the fastest pace in decades, making housing costlier than ever for many Americans,” the Washingon Post reported on April 21:

    Nationally, rents rose a record 11.3 percent last year, according to real estate research firm CoStar Group. That fast pace of growth remained elevated in the first months of 2022, as many parts of the country continued to notch double-digit jumps in rent prices.

    “A supply-demand mismatch is making rents unaffordable,” said Dennis Shea, an advocate at the pro-migration Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington D.C.

    “In 49 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico, the average renter earns less than the average two-bedroom Housing Wage,” according to a 2021 report by the National Low Income Housing Coalition. The coalition is allied with the Democratic Party, and its 291-page report does not mention the impact of immigration.”

    https://www.breitbart.com/economy/2022/05/09/bidens-agencies-spike-housing-costs-with-more-refugees/

    Liked by 1 person

  34. EXCERPTS: “Even Donald Trump’s greatest defenders have to admit that the president’s personnel record was, well, mixed, veering from astonishingly insightful talent-spotting, as in the cases of National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien and Ambassador Ric Grenell (Full Disclosure: Both are friends) to astonishing missteps like Rex Tillerson, John Bolton, and this Esper chump. Not surprisingly, according to journalists who have had their interns skim his upcoming book, Esper expends a lot of ammunition attacking both O’Brien and Grenell. They would be the guys who merely helped bring peace to the Middle East, solve the Kosovo-Serbia dispute, and get NATO to start carrying its weight – all of which have come in pretty handy lately. In contrast, Esper – who you will not be shocked to learn worked for Raytheon before coming to the Pentagon – is a historical footnote whose Wikipedia page spends a lot of time talking about how he was very focused on welcoming transgender troops. There’s a sign of seriousness. His legacy is decline and pronoun justice.
    ——————
    Esper claims he stopped Trump from putting a bunch of troops on the border to stop illegal aliens. Well, with several million illegals wandering north, putting a bunch of troops on the border to stop illegal aliens is sounding pretty good right about now.

    Esper claims he stopped Trump from sending in troops to get serious and suppress the 2020 Democrat riots. Well, I was part of the Army response to the LA Riot and we ended that nonsense in three days. The 2020 rioting went on all summer. Great call, dude.

    Esper claims he stopped Trump from helping the Mexican government fight the drug cartels by blowing up drug labs. Well, with 100,000 Americans dead from fentanyl a year, if we have to fight a foreign enemy maybe it should be the enemy next door that’s literally killing 100,000 Americans a year instead of the foreign policy establishment’s villain du jour over in Whogivesadamnistan.

    Esper claims that he bravely opposed the idea of taking al-Baghdadi’s head, dipping it in pig’s blood, and marching it around to show the ISIS scuzzes the wages of sin because this was “a war crime.” Well, there is the whole problem about the Muslim mass murderer not being a lawful combatant and therefore not being covered by the Geneva Convention, but whatever. Why ruin a good anecdote where he thinks he’s the hero with, you know, facts?

    Esper wanted to keep lots of forces in Germany, perhaps as a reward for the Germans’ wunderbar contributions to NATO, instead of positioning our forces forward in allied countries actually threatened by Russia. While O’Brien and Grenell demanded the krauts pay their fair share, Esper was firmly with those who wanted Uncle Sucker to keep footing the bill for the free-riding strudel-munchers.
    —————-
    These guys are all the same, towering mediocrities who nonetheless lack humility despite having so much to be humble about. I will give Esper some credit – while he’s as useless a liberal rump-sniff as any Lincoln Project goblin, at least he’s allowed within a quarter mile of a school. Sadly though, if his disgraceful tenure at the Pentagon is any indicator, he would use that access to inject CRT, pronoun stupidity, and the other shibboleths of modern progressivism into the classroom just as he let it infect our military under his alleged leadership. Our armed forces were measurably worse when he finally left his position – there’s his tribute, a military that can’t win a war and can’t tell which bathroom to use.”

    https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2022/05/09/yawn–yet-another-never-trump-loser-sucks-up-to-the-media-n2606908

    Liked by 2 people

  41. “TOTAL LUNAR ECLIPSE: On Sunday, May 15th, the full Moon will pass through the shadow of Earth, producing a total lunar eclipse. This NASA animation shows how the Moon will turn red for almost 85 minutes:

    The eclipse will be widely visible from the Americas on May 15th; and Africa and Europe on May 16th: visibility map.

    There’s a chance that this eclipse will be affected by the eruption of the Tonga volcano on January 15th. During a lunar eclipse, most of the light illuminating the Moon passes through Earth’s stratosphere where it is reddened by scattering. Volcanic ash from Tonga reached an altitude of 30 kilometers, deep into the stratosphere, with a total mass of 400 million kilograms. The volcano’s lingering exhaust could shade the eclipse, making it a deeper darker red than usual.”

    https://spaceweather.com/

    Liked by 1 person

  42. Ah! Finally an explanation as to why the baby formula shortage is so bad!!!

    EXCERPT: “At the outset of his presidency, Joe Biden promised competence by a bigger, better government. A few days ago, one of his loyal allies exposed a gross incompetence by federal officials on Biden’s watch that defied that promise and inflamed a baby formula shortage now panicking parents nationwide.

    Rep. Rose DeLauro, D-Conn., a reliable liberal ally, unveiled documents showing the Biden Food and Drug Administration was alerted by a whistleblower last fall about potential contamination issues at the Abbott Nutrition baby formula factory in Michigan and failed for months to act aggressively.

    “The FDA reacted far too slowly to this report,” DeLauro said in releasing a letter to the Health and Human Services inspector general demanding an immediate investigation to an incident that has led to babies being sickened and dying and a belated recall that has emptied shelves of formula nationwide.

    The congresswoman, the chairwoman of the powerful House Appropriations Committee, laid out a four-month-long trail of federal bumbles and stumbles: the report came in Oct. 20, the whistleblower didn’t even get interviewed for two months, the plant didn’t get inspected until Jan. 31 and the recall didn’t get issued until Feb. 17.

    “Why did the FDA not spring into action?” she implored during a congressional hearing. “Why did it take four months to pull this formula off store shelves? How many infants were fed contaminated formula during this time, by parents who trusted that the formula they were buying was safe? How many additional illnesses and deaths were there due to FDA’s slow response?”

    Now the bureaucratic stumbling has escalated into a national crisis, as video of bare shelves and panicked parents harken in America some of the same fears and images as the bread lines and rationing that befell the Soviet Union in the early 1990s just before its collapse.

    The problems began even before the recall as inflation, labor shortages and supply chain slowdowns began putting pressure on the baby food staple last fall.”

    https://justthenews.com/government/white-house/bidens-bread-line-crisis-anatomy-american-baby-formula-shortage

    Liked by 1 person

  44. EXCERPT: “A judge has ruled that Georgia GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene can run for re-election, rejecting a lawsuit from a liberal group that had challenged her eligibility.

    Georgia state law states that State Administrative Law Judge Charles Beaudrot had to submit his findings to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

    Raffensperger accepted the judge’s findings and said Greene is qualified to run for re-election.

    “A Georgia administrative law judge issued a decision that Green was eligible to run following claims by five voters filed through the organization Free Speech for People. The lawsuit accused the controversial Northwest Georgia Republican of engaging in insurrection. The judge found that the plaintiffs had not produced sufficient evidence to back their claims,” local news outlet WUGA reported.

    “After Raffensperger adopted the judge’s decision, the group that filed the complaint on behalf of the voters vowed to appeal. Free Speech for People has filed similar challenges in Arizona and North Carolina. Greene has filed a federal lawsuit challenging the legitimacy of the law that the voters are using to try to keep her off the ballot. That suit is pending,” the outlet continued.

    Last month, an Obama-appointed federal judge allowed a liberal lawsuit aimed at disqualifying Greene from running for re-election.”

    https://conservativebrief.com/judge-21-62673/

    Liked by 1 person

  45. Well, so much for not putting feeders out. The grape jelly and nectar feeder and now….since I saw a goldfinch land on the thistle feeder and promptly fly away…..I realized it’s been out there all winter. So I had to bring it in, dump it and wipe it all out, then re-fill it – it was nasy! I do love gold finches!!!! When I had the Red Bud tree, I had tons of them but it died the first winter I was here.

    Liked by 2 people

      1. I’ve been chasing the orioles all morning…so i cut down a sour cream container and put some jelly in it and set it on the railing in front of the hummer feeder they keep trying to land on. one cautiously approached and ate some jelly! so i thought i could get them to stay off the hummer feeder…nope…they are trying to use both..greedy!

        Liked by 2 people

  46. we just got back from a mini banana run…ONE person in the store had on a mask. a male, about 40-ish with longer curly perm hair, wearing a bright green ninja turtles t shirt and green shorts…sneakers, no socks…the whitest person i have seen in my whole life–thinking gamer who lives in grandma’s basement…LOL…

    Liked by 3 people

  50. she’s a Vet too!

    Liked by 2 people

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