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The Weekly Gardening Thread is a weekly gathering of folks that love soil, seeds and plants of all kinds. From complete newbies that are looking to start that first potted plant, to gardeners with some acreage, to Master Gardener level and beyond, we would love to hear from you. If you have specific question about a plant/problem you are having, please remember to state the Growing Zone where you are located. This thread is non-political, although you will find that most here are conservative folks. No matter what, you won’t be flamed and the only dumb question is the one...

“Political power, properly so called, is merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another.” - Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto Controversy is swirling around an art event in Grand Rapids. An art festival is bringing a Down’s syndrome drag show from Britain, called Drag Syndrome, to town. The controversy isn’t aimed at Daniel Vais the London-based group’s founder and artistic director. Nor is it aimed at DisArt, the group organizing their Grand Rapids appearance but rather at Peter Meijer, the owner of the venue who has decided he doesn’t wish to make his establishment available for this...

This is important because a biliary stent is only installed if a tumor was large enough to cause blockage of the bile duct from the liver to the intestine. It is typically performed in cases where the patient has cancer on the duct itself and often predicates liver cancer. Again the stent is typically only used in advanced cases and often only surgery is done for early cases:

Is Democrat on Democrat shade is going mainstream? Probably not, but the Bill Maher/Rashida Tlaib feud is just the latest high-profile example of division within the ranks of the left, with potential ramifications involving the long-term loyalties of Jewish voters. Have Jewish liberals, who count among their rank’s notable Americans including Sarah Silverman, Bette Midler, Seth Rogan, Jon Stewart and so many other outwardly anti-Trump individuals, allowed the blind hatred they feel over the president, who has been a great ally to Israel and American Jews, to take precedence over their religious values? The issue inflaming tensions between Maher and...

“The thought of foolishness is sin: and the scorner is an abomination to men” (Proverbs 24:9).

Trooper Nicholas Hopkins was shot and killed while serving a search warrant at a home at 1426 North 42nd Street and Caseyville Avenue in East St. Louis, Illinois. He and other members of the Emergency Response Team were making entry into the home at 5:30 am when he was shot by an occupant during an exchange of gunfire. Trooper Hopkins had served with the Illinois State Police for 10 years. He is survived by his wife and children.

A recent pilgrimage by a “delegation” of three Chicago schoolteachers to Venezuela in a show of support for dictator Nicolas Maduro is a reminder that you truly cannot fix stupid. A stubborn strain of obtuseness runs through humanity that apparently no real-world demonstration of socialism’s horrors can eliminate. The saddest aspect of this spectacle, perhaps, is that the chosen vocation of these pathetic diehards extolling Maduro’s madness is educating America’s youth. Despite a century’s experience in the abject failure of socialism’s economic policies, the mass slaughter that invariably accompanies it, and the societal wreckage left in its wake; there always...

Efforts to stampede the USA and world into forsaking fossil fuels and modern farming continue apace. UN and other scientists recently sent out news releases claiming July 2019 was the “hottest month ever recorded on Earth” – nearly about 1.2 degrees C (2.2 degrees F) “above pre-industrial levels.” That era happens to coincide with the world’s emergence from the 500-year Little Ice Age. And “ever recorded” simply means measured; it does not include multiple earlier eras when Earth was much warmer than now. Indeed, it is simply baseless to suppose that another few tenths of a degree (to 1.5 C...

When President Trump issued a series of four tweets in response to China’s tariff threats Friday morning, Wall Street took a dive. A Matt Phillips of the New York Times wrote: Stocks fell sharply on Wall Street on Friday after President Trump responded to China’s threat of new tariffs on American imports with an angry volley of tweets, helping to push the market to its fourth-straight weekly loss. The S&P 500 dropped 2.6 percent, while the technology-heavy Nasdaq index fell 3 percent. The Dow Jones industrial average declined 2.4 percent. Investors were on edge before trading started after Beijing...

This year's National Defense Strategy heralded the return of peer competitors and the re-emergence of long-term great power competition.  The debate among national security experts that followed its publication mostly focused on whether China or Russia is the bigger long-term threat to the U.S. China is a rising power with national ambitions whose goal is to supplant U.S. atop the global hierarchy.  Russia?  It's a vodka-addled demographic basket case that runs a few troll farms, whose closest economic peers are Italy and Brazil.   But, an increasingly dangerous China is at best the number two national security threat, dwarfed by the much clearer...

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday the United States has a really good relationship with North Korea and that the country's leader, Kim Jong-un, has been "pretty straight" with him. "Kim Jong-un has been ... pretty straight with me," Trump told reporters at the White House after North Korea fired what appeared to be two short-range ballistic missiles into the sea off its east coast, according to the South Korean military. (Reuters) Earlier North Korea fired two suspected short-range ballistic missiles off its east coast Saturday in the seventh weapons launch in a month, South Korea's military said, a...

“This project (the 100 page “1619 Project” published by the New York Times magazine) is, above all, an attempt to set the record straight. To finally, in this 400th year, tell the truth about who we are as a people and who we are as a nation…On the 400th anniversary of this fateful moment (a ship containing slaves landing in Virginia) it is finally time to tell our story truthfully.” (The New York Times, Aug. 18th) "Out of slavery -- and the anti-black racism it required -- grew nearly everything that has truly made America exceptional: its economic might, its...

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas threatened this week that "million of fighters" would swarm Jerusalem and topple the Jewish state's capital city, warning that "no matter how many houses and how many settlements they declare that they [plan to build] here and there—they shall all be destroyed." Abbas, in an Arabic language speech at Jalazone Refugee Camp near Ramallah that was heavy with threats of destruction, doubled down on the Palestinian government's policy of using public money to pay convicted terrorists and their families, telling his audience, "We will not accept their designation of our martyrs as terrorists. Our martyrs...

For such an ambitious project examining America’s history of racism; the 1619 Project falls short on multiple levels. Right out of the gate, Nikole Hannah-Jones essay misleads on the Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution. First, it’s worth noting that NY Times publisher Dean Baquet admitted that since the Russia 24/7 narrative didn’t work as planned, exploring the roots of racism because Trump! is Plan B. Hannah-Jones went further when introducing the project. ““What if I told you that the year 1619 is as important to the American story as the year 1776? What if I told you that...

Did you know that there are more fatal accidents involving children and bicycles than there are involving children and guns?It is documented in the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) fatal injury database. As you can see from the illustration, for the last 19 years, from 1999 to 2017, there were 2,467 children killed in fatal accidents involving bicycles, versus 1,994 children killed in fatal accidents involving a firearm.Total accidental deaths of children (unintended deaths). Data from WISQARS database, Image created by Dean Weingarten, 14 August 2019. Both of the rates are very low. The firearm rate is...

This will be a weekly post. Count remains at 144 judges confirmed. 99 District Court judges 43 Circuit Court judges 2 Supreme Court justices

The mayor of Bloomington, Indiana knows who is responsible for the race-related turmoil plaguing his town’s weekly farmer’s market and dividing his college community: Donald Trump, of course. In a press conference last month announcing he would suspend the popular event for two weeks amid accusations one of the vendors is a white supremacist, Mayor John Hamilton said that the nation’s racially charged climate is to blame for his decision...

Joe Biden's presidential campaign is accusing President Trump's campaign of poaching online donors. In a fundraising email sent to supporters Thursday, the Biden campaign pointed out that if someone types "donate Joe Biden" into a Google search, the first link to appear is one that directs them to donate to Donald J. Trump for President. Here's what the search turned up Friday morning: "Trump's campaign is paying money to run ads online so that their donation link is the first thing you see when you search 'donate Joe Biden,'" the email read. "But, listen, here's the thing: We can't stop...

We kill them because we care. #JustSaying #BetterOffDead A very quick video by the same chick who brought you "The Magical Birth Canal"

As the debate over abortion rages, the abortion industry continues to switch its marketing strategies in order to win support. From “pro-choice” to “reproductive health care” to “reproductive rights,” pro-abortion organizations have always found a way to desensitize people to abortion in an attempt to not only normalize it but make it appear to be a “right” and a necessity. Now, a major pro-abortion organization has announced its new marketing term in hopes of winning moderate voters. According to VICE News, NARAL Pro-Choice America has said that in order to win over voters who consider themselves “personally” pro-life, they will...