Pucker Up!

Nature 1 Minute

Psychotria Elata: The Hooker’s Lips Plant

Psychotria Elata is one of the plants that will impress you with its rather unique visuals right from the start. Commonly known as the Hooker’s Lips Plant actually seems to be pretty similar to some very large lips. It’s basically a small tree found in Costa Rica and Columbia that has some very “alluring parts”.

It’s not easy to find this plant, that’s for sure. It constantly grows all the time. They are particularly fond of growing in damp soils, which makes them even harder to reach when compared to regular plants.

The downside is that this plant has now come close to extinction, mainly because its homeland was affected by constant deforestation. This is rather sad, considering that it is so unique.

There is a confusion though. People believe that the lips of this plant are the actual flower. No, this plant’s flower is separate from the “lips”.   In fact, the flowers come in between the lips. The overall lips are just modified leaves. They are actually named bracts.

Interior growers turn to plants from around the world to add exotic touches to the home. Hot lips plant fits the bill but requires a tropical environment. For this reason, it is mostly a collector’s plant for much of the United States. Growing hot lips plants requires a heated greenhouse or solarium, high humidity, and shelter from harsh solar rays.

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Published by pat frederick

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160 thoughts on “Pucker Up!”

  1. Morning All!
    it’s a shame that the first thing that comes to mind when i wake up is, what fresh hell will ultra maggot release on the country today?
    anyway…Happy Valentine’s Day!

    Liked by 3 people

    2. Liked by 3 people

  6. Liked by 2 people

  11. Citizen 817
    February 14, 2023 12:32 am

    @realDonaldTrump

    7h
    Sorry football fans! Because the Super Bowl was held in Arizona, the results of the game, after a lengthy analysis currently taking place of the “holding” call, will not be known for at least 4 weeks. Thank you for your attention to this matter, and I hope that you thoroughly enjoyed the game!

    Liked by 3 people

  12. Troublemaker10
    Troublemaker10
    February 14, 2023 12:48 am

    Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️
    @realchrisrufo

    BREAKING: Utah legislators have introduced a bill to ban “diversity statements”—which function as loyalty oaths to left-wing racialist ideology—in the state’s schools, universities, and government agencies. The war against the DEI bureaucracy is escalating fast.

    BREAKING: Utah legislators have introduced a bill to ban “diversity statements”—which function as loyalty oaths to left-wing racialist ideology—in the state’s schools, universities, and government agencies. The war against the DEI bureaucracy is escalating fast. pic.twitter.com/NSNlQzKnHl

    — Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) February 13, 2023

    Liked by 3 people

  17. teacher’s assistants and graduate student workers went on strike for more $$, and then didn’t show up for classes or work when they didn’t get it. college said, okay, you now lose your health benefits and your tuition is now due. (and the kids are SHOCKED…smh)
    FTA
    The above appears to have possibly been less than anticipated. As characterized by The College Fix, some refusing to work have been “shocked” to lose their health benefits and free tuition. Online, Ph.D. candidate Madison Ingram posted a screenshot of Temple’s missive to those not doing their jobs:

    As a result of your participation in the TUGSA strike, your tuition remission has been removed for the spring semester. You now owe the full balance listed in TUpay, which is due by Thursday, March 9th.

    If your balance is not paid-in-full by the due date, you will be assessed a $100 late payment fee and a financial hold will be placed on your student account. This hold will prevent future registration.

    For your convenience, you can make payment online…

    https://redstate.com/alexparker/2023/02/13/unconscionable-university-grad-assistants-go-on-strike-are-appalled-theyre-no-longer-being-paid-n703356

    Liked by 3 people

  18. Citizen 817
    February 14, 2023 8:03 am

    @realDonaldTrump

    34m
    Many of the so-called “documents” that the “Gestapo” took in the Raid of Mar-a-Lago, unlike the”No Raids of Biden,” were merely inexpensive and very common folders with words such as “Presidential Reading,” “Confidential,” “Classified,” or other words stamped on the front cover. There was nothing inside of the folders because, during meetings where information was passed out, say at the Oval Office, when finished the papers inside were taken back, but the empty folders were left behind…..

    @realDonaldTrump

    11m
    Page Two: I would put them in a pile and keep them as momentous. Nothing wrong with that, but sounds to me that the Injustice Department views these as DOCUMENTS – They are not! These people are just out looking for trouble! Should be checking Biden’s unsecured classified docs instead. How about the 1,850 Boxes sent to Delaware. That’s the mother load! Or separately, how about revealing who spied on my campaign, stuffed the ballot boxes, or paid off the FBI? That’s what people want to hear!

    Liked by 2 people

  19. the last part is sooooo TRUE

    Fergus
    Fergus
    February 14, 2023 8:23 am

    When will the NFL play the white, Asian, Hispanic and moslem national anthems at the Super Bowl.

    If you need an adjective before American you’re not an American you’re a scammer.

    Liked by 2 people

  21. “Whole Language Harms Children – Maybe Most Children. We Must Now Pivot to Science-Based Reading Education. Part 1. I found a six-part series of the podcast Sold a Story. We all should listen to it.”

    James Lyons-Weiler
    4 min ago

    EXCERPT: “In the US, one out of four kids in public school cannot read. This is the result of what happens when you teach kids who can decode words how to read like kids who cannot read, based on a flawed theory from New Zealand in the 1960s. I cannot stress how important this is.

    Take 32:47 today and listen to this first exquisitely done six-part series by Emily Hanford. And please share this Popular Rationalism Article on social media because, for these kids, you are the solution.

    Millions of kids can’t read well. Scientists have known for decades how children learn to read but many schools are ignoring the research. They buy teacher training and books that are rooted in a disproven idea. Emily Hanford investigates four authors and a publishing company that have made millions selling this idea.”

    Audio link: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6UCmolHYrUrNKPilbDCLcp

    Liked by 1 person

  27. “After Heated Public Hearing, Florida Board of Medicine Confirms Ban on Transgender Treatments for Minors — LGBTQ activists overwhelmed the hearing, shouting expletives and waving transgender flags”

    By Anna Allen, February 13, 2023

    ENTIRE ARTICLE @ FreeBeacon: “After a heated public hearing, Florida’s Board of Medicine and Board of Osteopathic Medicine on Friday unanimously confirmed a rule that prohibits doctors from prescribing certain treatments for children with “gender dysphoria.”

    The two boards originally passed their “Standards of Practice for the Treatment of Gender Dysphoria in Minors” in November, following petitions from the state Department of Health. The standards prohibit doctors from treating a minor’s “gender dysphoria” with sex reassignment surgeries and hormone therapies. The Board of Osteopathic Medicine added an exception to its rule, allowing nonsurgical treatments on minors performed under “clinical trials.”

    While numerous state legislatures are considering protections against transgender treatments for children, Florida is the first state to pass these protections through an administrative process. Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R.) Health Department requested last summer that the two medical boards set standards for transgender treatment.

    In Friday’s hearing, a representative from the department petitioned the Osteopathic Medicine Board to remove the exception, arguing that one board allowing the exception while the other did not would only create confusion. “The department is concerned the exception undermines the purpose of this rule,” John Wilson, general counsel for the Department of Health, said.

    The board unanimously voted to remove the exception and confirm the standards as outlined by the Board of Medicine, to the dismay of a large crowd of LGBTQ activists present at the hearing.

    Attendees shouted expletives while waving transgender flags and signs in protest. Hecklers interrupted board members’ defense of the standards, shouting, “Shame!” The board heard two hours of public comments, mainly from pro-transgender advocates opposing the rule. One transgender man gave himself a hormone injection in front of the board during his testimony. Five law enforcement officers stood in between attendees and board members when the meeting adjourned.

    Simone Chriss, the director of Southern Legal Counsel’s Transgender Rights Initiative, spoke in opposition to the new standards, saying “the overwhelming weight of evidence and science” shows that “access to treatment for gender dysphoria is safe, effective, and medically necessary.”

    “That’s not true. The literature is not clear,” board member Dr. Hector Vila replied, noting the “hundreds of studies,” doctor interviews, and testimonies the boards reviewed when crafting these standards. “There’s not adequate evidence to support the use of the therapies, the limited therapies that we’ve said should not be used because of the irreversible harm.”

    Liked by 1 person

  29. “Intel Officials’ Fresh Laptop Baloney — After calling the Hunter Biden laptop Russian disinformation in 2020, Jim Clapper and co. set about restoring their tarnished reputations.”

    Washington Free Beacon Editors
    February 13, 2023

    ENTIRE ARTICLE @ FreeBeacon: “Two and a half years after more than 50 intelligence community pooh-bahs emerged to slime the New York Post’s pre-election report on Hunter Biden’s laptop, the fact-checkers have arrived on the scene. With Biden safely ensconced in the White House—and with the facts about the laptop plainly obvious—the Washington Post has swooped in to tsk-tsk Politico for over-dramatizing its October 2020 headline: “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say.”

    Now that we all know the laptop is authentic, the Post wants us to distinguish between “disinformation” and “information” campaigns—foreign efforts to interfere with our elections through the dissemination of accurate information. Scary!

    But anyway, the former intelligence officials’ letter, the Post’s Glenn Kessler writes, “does not even say what the Politico headline claimed—though that headline likely shaped perceptions of the letter that continue to this day.” Except, the headline did appropriately characterize what the intelligence officials said, sans the cover-your-ass caveats those officials well knew would be ignored by a partisan and irresponsible press. That was precisely their intent.

    It was the lack of any journalistic skepticism about those claims, and the motivations the parties might have had for making them, that was the mistake. The Post reveals that the letter was the brainchild of former deputy CIA director and ubiquitous television presence Michael J. Morell, “a top candidate for CIA director in a Biden administration.” Forgive us for thinking that a seasoned Washington operator like Morell might have had some idea how the letter would be received in the press and consider it just the sort of thing that would nudge his application for CIA director to the top of the pile.

    That brings us to the rest of the letter’s signatories, who have decided now’s the time to point out subtleties in their letter that two-and-a-half years of hysterical press coverage overlooked. The former director of national intelligence, James Clapper, told the Post that Politico was guilty of “message distortion.”

    “All we were doing was raising a yellow flag that this could be Russian disinformation,” he added. “Politico deliberately distorted what we said.” Now he tells us! The figures most guilty of distortion in this sorry ordeal are Morell, Clapper, and their colleagues, and their attempts to distort, retroactively, their October 2020 efforts add insult to injury.

    The mainstream media, for its part, have been revealed as their witting pawns, starting with the Politico piece and ending with the laughable Washington Post fact check that lays the blame primarily at Politico’s feet—rather than calling these Democratic operati, er, intelligence officials—to account for their own attempts to influence a U.S. election.”

    Liked by 1 person

  30. Watching Tucker from last night – JD Vance, the new Senator from OH:

    Tucker: “They talk a lot about environmental racism but this is like an actual environmental disaster – I don’t detect any urgency from the EPA or from Washington at all. Is it because these are not their voters?”

    Vance: “I think that’s a big part of it – I think that the entire country, the media complex, the leaders of this country, have decided to disregard the people of East Palestine. If you look at the way that this story has been covered – if it’s been covered at all, it’s about how there are poor people in E. Palestine who have been victimized by this disaster. Well, of course, that’s true but you want journalists asking the tough questions about what’s going on. You want to know, for example, what level of vinyl chloride is actually acceptable in the water. I’ve been trying to get an answer to that question for days and I haven’t been able to get an answer to it. Why is vinyl chloride showing up in the Ohio River in WV and Cincinnati, hundreds of miles away from where this accident took place? There are a lot of questions and we don’t, unfortunately, have a media that’s asking those questions and answering them.

    Tucker: “It’s just crazy, I mean, all these people are defacing paintings because they ‘care about the earth!’ If you care about the earth, clean air and water is the first step!!!”

    Liked by 1 person

  32. Good old schizo weather here in NE! Up to 37 and now we are getting some rain. Supposed to get heavier this afternoon – hope it’s not too much or we’ll have flooding, what with all the snow that still remains. Then this evening it’s supposedly going to wrap around and bring a brief period of snow again. SMDH – a couple of cold days, then back up into the mid-to-high 40’s next week!

    Liked by 1 person

  36. “Red Pill warning…Your daily dose of natural disasters and amazing phenomena for February 14, 2023…”
    Strange Sounds
    32 min ago

    EXCERPT: “While you’re looking at “UFOs” and balloons:

    — Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh has accused Joe Biden and the CIA of sabotaging the Nordstream pipeline in EXPLICIT detail. [Substack]
    — A smoking gun e-mail from Ukraine’s board of directors Vadim Pozharsky asked Hunter Biden and Devon Archer how Hunter can use his influence to get Viktor Shokin fired. Joe is on tape admitting this. Hunter’s Laptop, in FBI possession, has that email on it. [Time]
    — The Epstein court documents have just been released, over 2000 pages with list of people on that island [DocCloud]
    – A 50 car train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio that the EPA “control burned” is chernobyling the eastern part of the U.S… Now fish and wildlife are turning up dead all over. The fallout is about 200 miles wide now and is going to spread through air and water… [My newsletter]

    But look at the shiny balloon!

    Ohio, East Palestine right now…

    I would have thought anyone working in the area should be in full hazmat suit… They have indeed released new data, showing that there were more toxic chemicals on train that derailed in Ohio than originally reported…”

    https://strangesounds.substack.com/p/red-pill-warning

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Like

  38. Premium article:

    “A Blueprint For Ending The Voting Machines Has Arrived — Republican lawmakers can stop electronic voting machines with a single 6-page resolution”

    Emerald Robinson
    31 min ago

    “A resolution has just passed out of committee (as an amendment) that should effectively prohibit computerized voting machines in federal elections. It bans any component (or element) used in the electronic voting machines from being used as the primary method for counting votes in a federal election unless it can meet Department of Defense standards — and none of them can do so currently. The resolution also requires that the ballots, the source code, and other log files must be publicly posted.

    https://www.azleg.gov/legtext/56leg/1R/proposed/S.SCR1037BORRELLI.DOCX.htm

    The resolution is called SCR 1037. The resolution is very significant because it relies on the Arizona’s legislature’s constitutional authority to set election law — thereby completely bypassing the current Governor of Arizona, Katie Hobbs (D). That’s right: it does not require the consent or the signature of Arizona’s governor. In other words: this is the blueprint for GOP lawmakers to stop the voting machines in other states.”

    Liked by 1 person

  40. ultra maggot fires the Architect of the Capitol
    entire story
    President Joe Biden has removed Capitol architect Brett Blanton from his post in the aftermath of an inspection which revealed Blanton had abused his position.

    Blanton will cease to serve as the architect of the Capitol at 5:00 PM EST, the White House announced.

    Biden removed the architect, who serves at the president’s pleasure, after Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said he had lost confidence in Blanton’s ability to perform his job.

    “The Architect of the Capitol, Brett Blanton, no longer has my confidence to continue in his job,” McCarthy wrote in a Feb. 13 Twitter post. “He should resign or President Biden should remove him immediately.”

    Blanton was “terminated at the President’s direction,” the White House said on Monday.

    Concerns about Blanton center around an Office of the Inspector General (OIG) report finished last year that found “administrative, ethical, and policy violations.” These included abuse of his government vehicle and misrepresentation of himself as a law enforcement officer (pdf).

    At the top of the document, the OIG report concludes: “J. Brett Blanton, Architect of the Capitol, Abused His Authority, Misused Government Property and Wasted Taxpayer Money, Among Other Substantiated Violations.”

    “Prior to and throughout the OIG investigation, Blanton consistently contradicted his vehicle-use authority,” the report reads.

    The report relays an ethics tip describing an encounter with Blanton’s vehicle.

    The complainant spotted Blanton’s government-issue black Ford Explorer. At the time, the vehicle was reportedly “driving extremely reckless[ly]” through a parking garage. The driver, a female, was going an estimated 65 miles per hour or faster in an area with a speed limit of 30.

    The driver at the time was later revealed to be Blanton’s daughter.

    The report noted that while “the Architect of the Capitol (person) or their designee has the authority to determine if a compelling operational condition exists that would benefit AOC operations by using a motor vehicle for [home-to-work] use,” Blanton had not identified his daughter as an authorized driver of the vehicle.

    The report goes on to list other violations committed by Blanton with other government-issue vehicles.

    Rep. Bryan Steil (R-Wis.), who chairs the House Administration Committee, agrees with McCarthy on the need to remove Blanton.

    “[The] Inspector General’s report was highly concerning,” Steil was quoted as saying on a Twitter post. “[Blanton’s] refusal to be transparent and truthful has made clear that he can no longer lead the organization and must resign immediately.”

    It was not only Republicans who are critical of Blanton—Democrats have also blasted the embattled former architect.

    During a hearing, Rep. Norma Torres (D-Calif.) told Blanton she was “outraged” by his decision to work from home on Jan. 6, 2021.

    Blanton chose to work from home that day, which law enforcement leaders expected could take a turn for the worst.

    Citizens for Ethics, a left-leaning political oversight organization, also called for Blanton’s removal in a Jan. 18, 2023 letter to the leadership of the 118th Congress (pdf).

    Blanton could not be immediately reached for comment.

    https://www.theepochtimes.com/biden-fires-capitol-architect-after-inspection-revealed-abuses_5054497.html?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=BonginoReport&src_src=partner&src_cmp=BonginoReport

    Like

    1. Interesting….wish I was still in touch with my old friend, David, who used to work for the Architect of the Capitol. Of course, it wasn’t this guy who was in charge when David got fired wrongfully but still….no doubt it would interest him.

      Liked by 1 person

  42. Troublemaker10
    Troublemaker10
    February 14, 2023 12:36 pm

    Well, that’s interesting. Pence is fighting subpoena based on “speech and debate clause”….Trump may not even assert “Executive privilege”.

    **********

    Mike Pence to fight DOJ special counsel subpoena on Trump’s efforts to overturn 2020 election results

    Excerpt:

    The former vice president’s allies told Politico he’s protected by a constitutional provision called the “speech and debate clause,” which generally shields members of Congress from having to fear that anything they say during legislative activities will implicate them in a lawsuit. According to Politico, Pence’s allies said federal prosecutors are legally blocked from compelling testimony from the former vice president related to key elements of Smith’s probe under the Constitution’s separation of powers.

    “He thinks that the ‘speech or debate’ clause is a core protection for Article I, for the legislature,” one of the two sources familiar with Pence’s legal strategy told Politico on condition of anonymity. “He feels it really goes to the heart of some separation of powers issues. He feels duty-bound to maintain that protection, even if it means litigating it.”

    –snip–

    Trump, for his part, has not said whether he plans to assert executive privilege, a doctrine meant to protect the confidentiality of the Oval Office decision-making process, to prevent Pence’s testimony.

    https://www.foxnews.com/politics/mike-pence-fight-doj-special-counsel-subpoena-trumps-efforts-overturn-2020-election-results

    Liked by 1 person

  44. “Honor-related child abductions on the rise in Sweden — At least 916 children have been forcefully taken out of Sweden in the last five years, but with underreporting a massive issue, the true figure could be much higher”

    February 13, 2023
    editor: REMIX NEWS author: THOMAS BROOKE

    ENTIRE ARTICLE: “At least 916 children have been abducted and taken out of Sweden in the last five years, the majority of which are understood to be honor-related abductions by family members traveling back to Islamic countries, research conducted by broadcaster SVT has revealed. The country’s foreign ministry has only been producing statistics on how many people are abducted or unlawfully detained in another country since 2018, and since then, 1,151 cases have been recorded, 916 of which have been children.

    Ia Sveger, a lawyer who spoke to the broadcaster, revealed the true figure is probably far greater, as the number of child abductions is greatly underreported due to a lack of trust by family members in the authorities’ ability to help. “This applies above all when abductions take place to countries that are not affiliated to the Hague Convention — so-called non-convention countries. There, the help you can get from the foreign ministry is very limited,” Ia Sveger said.

    She explained that one of the main reasons for a child being unlawfully detained in another country is honor-related, where a family member may abduct their own child and take them to a more religiously conservative society in order to protect cultural or religious beliefs. These may be as a result of seemingly trivial cultural transgressions undertaken by a child in the host country, or to prevent such a transgression from taking place.

    According to the research conducted by SVT on child abduction cases, 48 percent of all children abducted in an “honor” context in 2021 and 2022 were taken to Iraq and Somalia, strictly Islamic countries that adhere to Sharia customs and laws. Syria was also high on the list of recorded abduction cases.

    In the last year, the National Center Against Honor-Related Violence and Oppression in Sweden has fielded a record number of calls regarding suspicions, concerns, or alarms about abductions that take place in an honor context. A total of 210 emergency calls about honor-related child abductions were recorded last year, the highest number since the helpline was established in 2014.

    One case study was a woman named Hala whose daughter was unlawfully taken by her ex-husband back to his native country of Jordan eight years ago. According to Hala, the father had previously said that he did not want to raise his daughter in Sweden because she would become “too Swedish” and would not be brought up religiously enough in Sweden. The daughter was kidnapped and remained in Jordan for the next eight years, where she is now due to be wedded in an arranged marriage organized by the father.

    Honor abductions are not the only honor-related crimes to affect Sweden. Honor killings and other honor-related crimes have become a major problem for Sweden in recent years due to mass immigration from “honor societies.” In an example of the violence displayed in some such cases, an Afghan man and his two sons stabbed another man 90 times to “preserve honor.”

    In September 2019, the Swedish Police Authority began specifically tracking honor-related crimes, and by November 2021, 4,500 suspected honor-related crimes had been registered in the country’s database. According to the Swedish Agency for Youth and Civil Society, a report from 2009 showed that about 70,000 women and men said they risked being forced to marry against their will. These numbers represent a massive 6.6 percent of females and 3.5 percent of males in the 16-25 age group in Sweden.”

    Liked by 1 person

  45. “Candymaker Fined After Two Employees Fell Into Chocolate Vat”

    ENTIRE ARTICLE @ DailyCaller: “The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) fined Mars Wrigley, a popular candy maker, after two workers fell into a vat of chocolate while working at a factory last year. In June 2022, two contractors were hired to help clean and maintain Mars Wrigley’s manufacturing equipment at their Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, factory. The two workers fell into a partially filled chocolate tank they were working on, the Daily Caller previously reported.

    Firefighters were forced to drill a hole in the tank to rescue the workers, who were in waist-high chocolate. Both workers were brought to the hospital after the accident, with one being transported by helicopter.

    The OSHA violation contested Mars Wrigley’s factory did not train its employees properly and that the workers were not authorized to work on maintaining the chocolate tanks. A $14,500 fine was issued to the chocolate maker for the “Serious” citation.

    A Mars Wrigley spokesperson asserted the company prioritizes the safety of its employees and contractors in a statement given to the Associated Press. “The safety of our Associates and outside contractors are a top priority for our business. As always, we appreciate OSHA’s collaborative approach to working with us to conduct the after-action review.”

    Mars Wrigley produces multiple popular candies, such as M&Ms, Dove chocolate, Snickers and Skittles.”

    Liked by 1 person

  49. Liked by 1 person

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