BLACK KNOT OF PLUM, AND THE AMERICAN KULAKS

ANOTHER HUMID, HAZY MORNING

BLACK KNOT OF PLUM...

ATTACKS PLUMS AND CHERRIES, BOTH  ORNAMENTAL AND EDIBLE

Tuesday, 8:15 AM.  72 degrees F, wind WNW, light.  The humidity is 93% and the sky is blue but rather hazy.  The barometer predicts rain.  We had a “Shakespeare storm” last night …”Full of sound and fury, but signifying nothing.” Except some wet pavement.
    This being a lush growth summer, pests and diseases are also rampant.  Cherries and plums, ornamental as well as edible, are very susceptible to black knot of plum, a serious and usually fatal disease.  If it is recognized when first established on branches it can be controlled with preventive pruning and spraying but that is usually not the case.  The tree pictured here is a hybrid Canada red ornamental cherry.  Cherries and plums are problematical and usually short lived and unless grown for fruit, best avoided.
    Political commentary: The big Obamacare question, “is it a tax or not a tax,” is easily answered by the fact that the IRS will enforce it.  And, it will fall primarily on the “middle-class,”  not on some fictitious “1%.”
    Let us remember that, despite his reputed admiration for the middle-class, Barack Obama has spent his educational and political career catering not to it, but to the lower-class, or perhaps the term should be the under-class, those dependent upon government largess for their survival,  And, he has spent his presidency trying to enroll more and more people in the under-class, through unemployment and government relief programs, thereby creating a larger and larger political base for himself and the Democrat party.
    Let us remember also that Obama is the furthest left president we have ever elected, that he is highly schooled in left wing theory and practice.  Does he see, as Stalin did, the Bourgeoisie as the ultimate enemy? Does he see the independent small business and agricultural class as the great threat to creating a classless society?  Stalin killed millions of Kulaks trying to achieve that end. 
    The power to tax is the power to destroy.  The administration, with the approval of the Supreme Court, by its control of the Internal Revenue Service, now has, through Obamacare, the potential power to destroy tens of millions of our middle-class, the American Kulaks. Stalin starved the Kulaks to death when they did not revolt.  Hitler gassed millions of Jews when they did not revolt.  Will the American middle-class also allow itself and our republic to be fatally weakened and destroyed, without protest?