Kimberley Burg

Fair Trade Staff-One World Goods. Historic Museum Interpreter-Genesee Country Village & Museum. Committed to social justice. #BillsMafia #BillsMafiaBabes

[Kimberley Burg @billsfirst]

It costs nothing but pays out in happiness. Showing a little love today...the world needs it! #26Tuesdays #26shirts @HamlinIsland @BillsMafiaBabes @BuffaloBills #BillsMafia

[Occupy Democrats @OccupyDemocrats]

BREAKING: DUCK DOOM? Trump’s poisoning the reflecting pool with industrial hydrogen peroxide makes bad times for the canal’s cutest inhabitants.

Those poor little ducklings.

As National Park Service workers pour gallon after gallon of 12 percent hydrogen peroxide, which can burn skin and cause serious toxicity, into Donald Trump’s newly “improved” Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, the real victims are the families of ducks who actually live there.

Trump crowed an inordinate amount even for him about how wonderful his reflecting pool project was going bo bragged endlessly about his fancy “American flag blue” renovation was going to be, and the issue initially was whether it was going to look too much like a swimming pool.

Who could have predicted it would hilariously transform into a massive, bright green algae bloom overnight. Now they’re hitting it with chemicals strong enough to worry the CDC, all while the adorable families of waterfowl go about their daily business.

“It’s a bad day to be a duck,” one insightful on-the-spot journalist reported from the scene.

The whole reflecting pool debacle is darkly hilarious in its symbolism of Trump's insistence on barrelling ahead at double speed on every and general not doing things the right way.

Couple that with the newly revealed contractor, cartoonishly kitted in gangster chic and chomping Havana complete with a goomah by his side, it’s become downright hilarious.

… until you remember those adorable little fluffballs that love to follow their mamas around in the now-toxic pond.

Between the peeling paint, the burgeoning bloom, and now the panicked response, the project has become classic Trump theater, with MAGA incompetence in full, er, bloom, what at what hazard to the birds and the bees?

Let’s face it. On a project that should have been an easy “win” just by doing it the right way, Trump blew $14 million on a no-bid contract (because screw bids, right?) to a bribery-convicted huckster, no planning, and no actual scientific analysis of what would work well and what . . . not.

Rumor has it that Trump’s team is now negotiating a deal with the algae, the terms being that the algae agree that the pool color scheme will now change from “American flag blue” to “American grassland green,” and they stay on in a key aesthetic role.

Trump has assured us it will be a big win. But for the ducks?

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

A reflecting pool is supposed to show you the truth. This one actually does.

Trump promised a fresh coat, bright and bold, American flag blue, covering everything that came before. The reality is paint clumped, peeled, and curdled into a swampy green sludge, floating in ugly little islands across the water.

A no-bid contract handed to a guy whose price ballooned past $14 million and counting.

Cheap materials and no plan for what happens when it dries.

And when it inevitably falls apart, they blame the water, the weather, the paint, political opponents, and anyone but the people holding the brush.

Meanwhile the Interior Department’s social media reads like a North Korean state broadcast, breathlessly hailing the dear leader while crews stand vacuuming algae off the bottom.

Honestly, you could not write a better metaphor for this presidency if you tried.

[Rep. Melanie Stansbury @Rep_Stansbury]

The algae really had the upper hand this week, didn’t they? 🦠

[Chris Murphy 🟧 @ChrisMurphyCT]

The plan is for this plane to be in service for two years and then Trump will take if for himself. No President has ever stolen an Air Force for himself.

And you paid for it. The total cost could be $1 billion of your money for a new luxury jet for Trump and his family.

[Bill Madden @maddenifico]

What a reflecting pool is supposed to look like.

[Chef José Andrés 🕊️🥘🍳 @chefjoseandres]

Nobody will add extra salt and black pepper to any dish without my express
Permission and consent…NO TOLLS should be paid for the use of Spanish recipes anywhere….unless they are impose by me because I don’t like your dish….Thank you for your attention on this matter!

[Lakota Man @LakotaMan1]

Why is the U.S. giving Iran $25 billion for “humanitarian purposes” when the Navajo Nation Reservation is declaring a state of emergency due to having no access to fresh drinking water?

[CBS News @CBSNews]

President Trump's investment accounts traded between $212 million and $695 million in stocks and other securities over the first three months of the year, an unprecedented sum for a sitting president. Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, Netflix, Oracle and AMD were among the companies that appeared most frequently in the portfolio.

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

Fred Rogers met with a child psychologist every week for 22 years to build his show. She shaped everything: every script, prop, and song. The whole point was to give a child's nervous system time to slow down. In 1984, a single regulatory decision ended all of it.

The psychologist was Dr. Margaret McFarland, who co-founded the Arsenal Family and Children's Center alongside Benjamin Spock and Erik Erikson. She and Rogers understood that the prefrontal cortex in children, the part of the brain that controls impulse, emotion, and attention, takes decades to fully develop. At the start of every episode, Rogers tied his sneakers and changed his sweater while children settled in. Those pauses were intentional, designed to help a child's nervous system shift into a calmer, more focused state.

What ended it had nothing to do with child development science. In 1984, Reagan's FCC chairman Mark Fowler abolished the advertising limits that had protected children's programming from commercial pressure. Toy companies moved within months. Between 1984 and 1985, cartoons tied to toy lines increased by 300%, from a handful of shows to more than 40 animated series. In almost every case, the toy was designed first. The cartoon was built to sell it.

Researchers later put numbers to what parents were already noticing. A 2011 study in Pediatrics from the University of Virginia tested 60 four-year-olds across three groups: one watching SpongeBob, which cuts scene every 11 seconds; one watching a slow PBS show, which cuts scene every 34 seconds; and one drawing. Nine minutes later, all three took tests on attention, impulse control, short-term memory, and problem-solving. The SpongeBob group scored significantly worse across every measure.

In the 1970s, children began watching television around age 4. Research from pediatrician Dimitri Christakis found that by 2009, the average age of first screen exposure had dropped to 4 months, as the content got faster and the audience got younger. Researchers separately found that each additional hour of daily screen time at ages 1 or 3 raised the risk of attention problems at age 7 by 9%.

[Scott Dworkin @funder]

🚨 ALERT: A quiet operation is underway to completely dismantle the US Forest Service. The plan? Close 57 research labs, force out thousands of scientists, and gut our wildland firefighting force. Congress can block it. Send your letter: 👇 https://t.co/V9HjOIeFGQ

[Brian Krassenstein @krassenstein]

BREAKING: They are now pouring bottles of hydrogen peroxide into the ultra-green algae-filled Reflecting Pool that Trump wasted $10m of our money on.

[Give A Shit About Nature @giveashitnature]

The single biggest irrigated crop in America isn't corn, wheat, or soybeans. It's not even avocados or almonds. It's lawn.

We grow more grass than any food crop in the country, around 40 million acres of it, and almost none of it feeds a single living thing.

Think about how strange that is. We took a grass that isn't even from here, planted it coast to coast, and now we pour water, fertilizer, and pesticide into keeping it short, green, and perfectly useless.

To a bee, a butterfly, or a bird hunting caterpillars for its chicks, a manicured lawn is a desert. Nothing to eat, nowhere to nest, mile after mile of it.

But here's the good news, maybe the easiest win on this whole account: you don't have to fix the entire desert. You just have to claw back a corner.

Pick one strip. The hellstrip by the sidewalk, the run along the fence, that awkward patch you hate mowing anyway. Stop mowing it and plant it with native flowers, a few black-eyed Susans, some bee balm, a couple of coneflowers. That's it. No ripping out the whole yard, no fight with anybody. Just convert one piece.

And that piece stops being dead space and starts being habitat: bees, butterflies, and birds showing up to a spot that offered them nothing a year ago.

Now picture your neighbor doing the same, and the one after that. That's how a desert turns back into a meadow, one reclaimed corner at a time.

[Andy Kim @AndyKimNJ]

This isn't a celebration of America 250. This is corruption on full display on the White House lawn:

➡️ Trump owns shares in both UFC and Paramount

➡️UFC CEO Dana White donated $1 million to a pro-Trump super PAC

➡️ One of the event's sponsors donated $35 million to MAGA, Inc.

[Chef José Andrés 🕊️🥘🍳 @chefjoseandres]

Photosynthesis is bipartisan….😎

[Give A Shit About Nature @giveashitnature]

It's the middle of June. Is it too late to plant flowers? No. Not even close.

Here's the thing about perennials: the first season isn't about the show so much as it is about the roots. There's an old gardener's line for it: the first year they sleep, the second year they creep, the third year they leap.

A native perennial you put in the ground this week spends all summer and fall digging in, building a root system down where you can't see it, and comes back next spring stronger.

So plant the tough natives now. These shrug off heat and want full sun:

- Black-eyed Susan, which may even bloom for you this year.

- Purple coneflower, a pollinator magnet that feeds goldfinches all winter.

- Butterfly weed, the native milkweed monarchs actually need. It loves warm soil, so now is perfect.

- Bee balm, if you want hummingbirds.

- Blazing star and coreopsis, both tough as nails.

- Goldenrod and asters, which bloom in fall, so you might get color out of them this very season.

There's exactly one rule for planting in summer heat: water them plenty. This first season, while the roots are still shallow, give them a good soak a couple times a week through the hot stretches. Once they're rooted in, you can walk away and they'll fend for themselves for years.

So no, you're not too late. You're right on time for the plant that comes back.

[Rep. Melanie Stansbury @Rep_Stansbury]

This ⬇️ is a real American hero!

Congresswoman Joyce Beatty is a Kennedy Center trustee who sued after the unlawful renaming of the center. Late Friday her suit prevailed and the center’s rightful name was restored. Thank you @RepBeatty , we love you! ❤️

[Aaron Parnas @AaronParnas]

NEWS: DCA is currently on a ground stop and has been temporarily closed “for an event.”

Planes set to land at DC’s airport have alerted their passengers.

This comes after we at @MeidasTouch reported pilots are filing safety reports due to the lights from Trump’s UFC octagon.

[The Tennessee Holler @TheTNHoller]

“We are deeply disturbed to learn so many senior members of the Trump administration gathered in the Situation Room to discuss the release of the Epstein Files as a reputational problem… we are separately concerned Todd Blanche was at that table.”

[Give A Shit About Nature @giveashitnature]

Folks talk like marigolds throw up some kind of invisible force field around the garden. Just plant a few next to your tomatoes and every bug gets the memo to stay away. Sadly, that's some gardening folklore.

But don't write them off, because what they actually do is better than the myth.

First, the roots are a real weapon. French marigolds (native to Mexico and Guatemala) release compounds, including one called alpha-terthienyl, that suppress root-knot nematodes, the microscopic worms that wreck the roots of tomatoes, peppers, and carrots.

That's well-documented science, not garden lore. The catch is you have to plant them thick, as a dense block or cover crop, not as a lone flower.

Second, there's evidence they can help suppress whiteflies. A controlled study found French marigolds planted among tomatoes gave off airborne limonene, the citrusy compound you smell when you brush the leaves, and it measurably reduced greenhouse whitefly numbers.

Third, they feed your bodyguards. Single-flowered marigolds provide nectar and pollen that attract hoverflies, lacewings, and parasitic wasps, many of whose young go on to hunt aphids and caterpillars for you. Skip the big pom-pom doubles, though. They're bred for looks, and pollinators have a harder time reaching the rewards.

And on top of all that they're tough, cheap, and bloom from spring until frost. So plant marigolds, just plant them for what they really do.

[VoteVets @votevets]

BREAKING: In a shocking maneuver, Senate Republicans just BLOCKED a Democratic effort to BAN federal troops from entering polling stations or seizing ballots or voting machines. Makes you wonder what they’re planning this November…