Extremely Common Flowers

Hello Friends,

I'm a big fan of dandelions despite them being so common. On a recent trip to Iceland we found them everywhere, in the same way we find them pretty much everywhere we've ever been. I took this shot with my Fujifilm W3 and converted it into a phantogram by forming what would be a rectangle around them (in fact a trapezoid) in the right eye shot and match up corner pixels in the left eye shot.

I can sum up this past week in politics in the USA by looking back to Monday's Rachel Maddow show on MSNow. If you saw the show or don't particularly like Rachel you can skip the rest.

She started by comparing a mnemonic devices for remembering the 5 great lakes, in the past HOMES (Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior), now switching to SHAME on the basis of Trump's insistence on renaming Lake Ontario to Lake America due to his stupid and harmful fight with Canada, one of our greatest allies.

Next she moved onto a story of how the Trump administration recently deported 70 immigrants to the Central African Republic, which is currently in the throes of a civil war and on an official list of countries deemed inadvisable to travel to. None of those deported had any ties to the CAR, and among the deportees was an Afghan refugee whose father, brother and sister worked alongside U.S. forces during our war in Afghanistan. US Marine Colonel Zachary Schmidt was personally involved in promising protection on behalf of the USA, and he spoke out about the deportation. Schmidt publicly stated "The United States made a commitment to protect the people who helped us, and that includes their families. We have to keep that promise." He warned that sending him to a conflict-ridden nation like the CAR left him highly vulnerable to being ultimately returned to Afghanistan, where he faces a certain death sentence by the Taliban.

The next story described how newly released emails show ICE and government officials from Iran, despite the two countries being at war, worked together, letting Iranian officials hand-pick specific Iranian refugees who had fled Iran, so as to deport them back to Iran.

Meanwhile our Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent hosted a meeting of the G20 finance ministers in Ashville, North Carolina, the theme of which was cracking down on countries supporting Iran. Of course that won't apply to China who buys most of Iran's oil export. Russia's finance minister also attended although no longer being part of the G20, and Russia supporting Iran's war effort with weapons and intellegence against the USA.

She next reported about resistance to Trump prisons in red-states Louisianna, Nebraska, Indiana, and Tennessee, and discussed Tarrant County, Texas' council vote to shut down 92 of their 316 voting locations for the midterms, many specifically on college campuses.

In Wyoming, the most pro-trump state their repubican governor Mark Gordon spoke out about how DOJ election monitors were "aggressive, unexpected, distuptive, didn't seem to show respect for the state ... I feel very strongly about the federal government taking our guns. I don't like that, And I don't like federal government coming in and taking our votes either".

The next story described new reporting of how during Obama administration major underground work at the white house was completed to build a bunker 60 feet deep that could withstand a nuclear blast, adequate for dozens of people for multiple weeks. In the meanwhile Trump's people have been arguing in court they need to build such a structure (that already exists) for national security in justifying construction of his ballroom. The Supreme court voted 5-4 to allow construction of ballroom to continue with Roberts voting against, saying it's "likely unlawful".

Her last story described that 17,180 lab confirmed cases of cyclosporiasis in have been reported to the CDC in the USA. Since Trump took office they have scaled back two of the three agencies for monitoring food borne illnesses and and the one remaining agency is being moved away from Washington D.C., with none of their employees willing to make the move.

Quite a lot to cover in one hour, perhaps 15-20 minutes of which was commercials.

Wishing for better,

Barry Rothstein

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