Fighting Back And Staying Sane

We came back home to a beautiful spring day.  While we were gone I got bits and pieces of 'the news,'  but mostly I was focused on grandchildren and friends.  These and the natural world are the true antidotes to the overdose of stupid* the USA is experiencing.

So, here, I'm going to give some excerpts from recent Alaska Dispatch News pieces along with their antidotes.

From Sen. Cathy Giessel:

"Some express dislike, even disdain, for businesses that employ thousands of our fellow Alaskans.  That animosity clouds the source of our prosperity, of what made the last two generations of families and businesses in our state an astonishing success."

This sounds good enough that I'm sure many people think, 'Yeah, that's right.'  But let's get real.

• I don't know any people who have disdain for businesses that employ thousands. They have disdain for businesses that treat their employees badly, that leave the environment worse than they found it, that take the wealth of Alaska to their various corporate headquarters outside the state rather than reinvesting here.
• It wasn't generations of families and businesses that caused our astonishing success.  It was the huge deposits of oil and the fact that the state owned the oil that caused our financial success and jobs.  Yes, oil companies played a big role in extracting that oil, but they also made huge profits from that oil.

I could go through her whole commentary line by line and point out what she doesn't mention.  But not now.

The antidote?   The amazing tulip in our front yard.    (I've photoshopped these images because the backgrounds tended to be messy and photoshop can be a fun distraction.  The originals are below.)




From an Ed Rogers commentary on Trump firing Comey (originally in the Washington Post)

"What it [Comey's firing] is, however, is the president following sound advice from a serious, credentialed and experienced leader in whom he has entrusted great responsibility.
The Rosenstein memo makes the reasoning behind Comey's firing nonpartisan and completely bulletproof."

Barf bags are in the seat pockets in front of you.  Real journalists, not Trump apologists, write, also in the Washington Post and reprinted in the ADN,

"The president already had decided to fire Comey . . . Trump gave Sessions and Rosenstein a directive:  to explain in writing the case against Comey. 

Rosenstein threatened to resign after the narrative emerged from the White House Tuesday evening cast him as the prime mover of the decision to fire Comey and the president acted only on his recommendation, said the person close to the White House . . ." [emphasis added]

For severed political spin nausea, here are some hosta shoots poking out of the ground.

OK, you get the point.  I don't need to add more examples of bullshit here.  I'm sure you've got way more than enough, so just take the antidotes.  Here are some lilac buds.

Some lily leaves exploding out of the earth.

 And there was a mailbox with a week's worth of mail.  Photoshop seemed like a good way to transform these mostly pieces of junk.

Here are the original pictures.  Except for the lily leaves.  I accidentally put the final version in, but I have to move on.  I hope my pictures inspire you to go out and look closely at the wonders of nature that surround us.

*Stupid is only one of the ills we are suffering. And using terms like stupid doesn't help cut through the conflicting ways of interpreting the world around us.  Probably it's more about the evil of people who produce create bogus facts and attack truth who are rewarded by the people who eagerly feed on the alternative realities like a drug for their emotional holes.