Free Republic

My almost 3 ft saguaro cactus overwinters in our “Mother-in-law room” and spends the summer in the front yard here in east central Illinois. I bought it as a seedling while visiting my brother in Tempe, Arizona in the early 70s. I have not paid any attention to its orientation, but it seems to be reasonably happy for a cactus. It’s in a pot and not real easy to move. Haven’t noticed anyone trying to steal it, but one time I saw a squirrel on top of it looking to get down. My guess was that he, being an Illinois squirrel, was not familiar with Arizona vegetation and jumped on it from a neighboring tree. Fortunately, I was quick with the camera and somewhere I have evidence of his folly. Wish it was video. Try that with your cabbage, daisies, lilies, etc.

No vendetta stuff. Its a sign that someone may willing to protect his falsely accused people.

This is from a few weeks ago: https://www.agweb.com/article/russias-blizzard-is-a-blessing-for-wheat-fields-blmg/

Russia was the world’s largest exporter of wheat last season.

Catch & release?

How do those ancient sites get all covered up with feet of dirty anyway?

Sometimes earthworms are responsible.

Obrador = Mexican Trudeau?

The Germans replaced capital punishment with two years in prison with early release.

Good article, but by concentrating on the subject of homicide we do not learn of the major effects of gun ownership on private law abiding citizens. Since it is criminal to own weapons, only criminals have weapons. It is common for criminals carrying “assault weapons” to enter public buses and relieve any passengers of their money and anything of value. Unless met with some resistance, most of these crimes are not associated with homicide, thus will not show up in gun owner discussions.

Where is Paul Harvey when you need him. The last holiday season, our small town was inundated with USPS mail delivery vehicles delivering packages 24/7. They packages were all from Amazon. Something strange here - I have used USPS to mail a few packages and there is no way that Amazon could use the postal service for their package delivery and make any money, the rates are way too high. About 5:30 am one day on my morning run, I was able to talk to one of the delivery persons. I discovered that the packages were delivered to the local post office multiple times per day with a large truck from Amazon. Amazon had done 90-95% or more of the effort before the postal service had ever seen the package. The USPS cost to deliver the package was as close to zero as it is possible to get.

If one digs a little the Wall Street Journal gives a clue on how this is possible https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-the-post-office-gives-amazon-special-delivery-1499987531?mod=trending_now_1 : “Amazon is big enough to take full advantage of “postal injection,” and that has tipped the scales in the internet giant’s favor. Select high-volume shippers are able to drop off presorted packages at the local Postal Service depot for “last mile” delivery at cut-rate prices. With high volumes and warehouses near the local depots, Amazon enjoys low rates unavailable to its competitors. My analysis of available data suggests that around two-thirds of Amazon’s domestic deliveries are made by the Postal Service. It’s as if
Amazon gets a subsidized space on every mail truck.”

I do not agree with this person’s conclusion in that to me, it appears that Amazon is subsidizing the postal service by using this technique.

I tend to avoid using Amazon, but in most cases, your local small business will likely be using them to order small quantities of specialty items for you and give you a markup.

1950? Why did Truman take it off? I suspect it had to do with jacking up the number of representatives from high illegal zones. Harry S - a scoundrel?

It is not clear how this survey was conducted. Apparently in Germany, When you pay your taxes, you can vote Catholic, Evangelical or none. If Catholic, the part of your taxes collected for church goes to the Catholics, if Evangelical, it goes to the Evangelicals. If you don’t want to support either, you vote none and any money you give to your church comes out of your pocket. It is not stated if other countries use similar approaches or if the nones are really none or people who don’t want their tax money supporting other churches.

The supporters of gender dysphoria seem to be such as Pritzer - Dem candidate for governor in Illinois, the rich fellow in Omaha and similar. With obama in charge & dem presidents as far into the future as could be seen, there would be BIG money in gender change operations, paid for by the military and universal obamacare. It appears that Trump threw a monkey wrench into their scam.

Hooker County license plate prefix = 93 out of 93 counties in Nebraska.

The license plate prefix sequence is derived from the number of vehicles registered in each county in 1922. - Wikipedia

Foreigners are finally buying some or our excess corn. First time in 2-3 years that we have been able to get a halfway decent price.

Items of interest: “A 175-foot section of the overall 320-foot long bridge will be prefabricated adjacent to Southwest 8th Street on MMC and then moved into position in a single night so as to minimize traffic disruption to Southwest 8th Street.”

“This will be MCM’s first design-build project with FIGG Bridge Engineers, an award-winning Tallahassee-based firm. FIGG has designed bridges throughout the U.S., including the Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge in Boston and the Sunshine Skyway Bridge in Tampa Bay.”

“I will bear witness” a diary from 1933 - 1941. There is a sequel which describes his survival through the war in Dresden and living under the commies. Victor Klemperer.

Cold water has no mercy.

Years ago a FReeper described his barely surviving cold water experience in a canoe or some kind of small craft. Someone else was there to rescue him or he would not have told the story.

“How does any meeting between Trump and Kim not turn into a victory for the North Koreans”

They must think Trump is FDR meeting with Stalin.

“He is afraid to fly.”

Probably has good reason to be. The % of the earth where NK has air superiority is quite small.

Who is buying?