Happy Fourth

The Cape Chestnut tree in front of my shop is really cranking.

I know that I am biased but I think that it is the prettiest street tree in Fallbrook and this year the South African native is really displaying its majesty.

Speaking of trees, did you know that a tree up in Riverside is one of the oldest plants on earth, over three times older than a bristlecone pine?

Estimated to be 13,000 to 18,000 years old, the tree — known as the Jurupa Oak — is older than almost any other plant on Earth. It has survived an ice age and rapid climate warming. Its leaves may have brushed against saber-toothed cats and 500-pound ground sloths. But now, environmentalists and locals worry that the ancient tree is under threat from a more quotidian force in modern California: development.

The Planning Commission of Jurupa Valley, a city of 100,000 an hour east of Los Angeles, is poised to approve a 1.4-square-mile development that includes a business park, 1,700 homes and an elementary school. Light-industry buildings would stand just a few hundred feet from the ancient tree.

Read about the Jurupa Oak. While it is still alive.

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Warren Gammeter up north sends a cool picture of a hawk in his birdbath. 

It's an old Indian grinding rock from the ranch where his wife Carol's mother grew up that he keeps filled with water. I think the red shouldered hawk appreciates it.

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Prospects for a second Trump term scare me. The Project 2025 handbook is like a Wermacht coloring book.

I would think the not very subtle threats of violence would horrify Americans but I understand that we have long lost the ability to be shocked and disturbed. It is the new world we live in.

I read the first thing the Republicans want to do is put Liz Cheney through a military tribunal. 

What's next, a firing squad?

I guess the payback begins on day one. Buckle down, America.

One thing that bugs me is that when left wing progressives act out, many of us Democrats will condemn them. But you rarely hear a word of condemnation from the right towards their own, they just pretend it's not happening or chalk it up to ... that's just Trump.

Where's Ken Griffin or Jamie Dimon or Lindsey Graham or Turley or any of the other Trump apologists on the prospect of a military tribunal and sending Cheney to the guillotine? Sure won't hear a peep from the Roberts Supreme Court if such a thing happens.

Crickets.

A lot has been made of Biden's age and supposed lack of mental acuity. I would take a brain dead Biden at the helm over an utterly morally bankrupt, corrupt liar and fascist lover of dictators like Trump any day of the week. Long as he has a pulse.

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I have a lot of animosity towards our Supreme Court, it's like "where do I start?"  But forgetting the fact that they have done extreme calisthenics in providing cover for Trump and giving him total immunity for "official acts", and forgetting Dobbs for a moment, I would prefer to focus on their war against the environment and so called administrative state.

God bless the administrative state. They are the only thing keeping us from being poisoned by a Big Business machine that would pollute our air, land and water and food without any qualms. A machine that the conservative SCOTUS majority continually shills for.

Now with the striking of Chevron, courts can decide about matters of science that they know nothing about. Private parties can foul riparian streams with development and polluting states can invade their neighboring states with noxious gasses and pollutants unchecked. Of course they frame this giveaway to industrial polluters as an issue of reclaiming individual liberties. Right.

The courts can say that one must leave such matters to legislators. Lot of good that will do us, we are a dysfunctional republic and will probably all be dead before they get their respective fingers out of their asses. The people at places like the EPA and OSHA and the so called regulatory state protect us from the rapacious vultures that fund the GOP and have them do their bidding.

And now Thomas wants to get rid of OSHA too. 

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The fourth of July has always been my favorite holiday, not sure why. I never have a bad fourth. This year I'm not really into the flagwaving. My country has gone astray and flags have been weaponized. I see people with giant flags as if it is a patriotism contest and I sometimes question their motives. 

Does Old Glory represent our great country's history and those that have fallen for our country or is it the flagpole we beat cops over the head with when we were taking back the people's house on January 6th? I forget? Who exactly are the true patriots again? Who best represents America's ideals?