New Marine Sanctuary

Yesterday,  Joe Biden's administration announced the establishment of a new marine sanctuary along the central California coast.  It will be the third largest in the United States, and jointly managed with the Northern Chumash Tribe that led the fight for the reserve for more than a decade. The native people consider this stretch of coastal waters to be their homeland. Their ancestors have lived here for more than 10,000 years.  In their belief people passing to another life do so from Point Conception.[map]  The area was nominated for protection in 2015 with the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The Chumash people lived in villages along the coast and are estimated to have had a population of 20,000.  After white settlement that numbered dwindled from displacement and disease.  The waters are also home to kelp forests, sea otters, seals, dolphins and migratory whales. [see video] .  Now, tribal members are being trained to collect samples for DNA analysis and monitor conditions in the reserve.  Scientists at Stanford University are compiling a baseline survey of marine species living in the Sanctuary.

Seventeen marine sanctuaries in the US are protected from development such as oil and gas drilling and wind farms, but commercial fishing is allowed but regulated.  The national system of sanctuaries was created in 1969 after the massive Santa Barbara oil spill. Chumash Heritage NMS is located between the Monterey Bay NMS and the Channel Islands NMS.  The Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant is located on the reserve's northern boundary.  The original proposal would have connected  it to the Monterey Bay NMS to the north.  The  reduced size still covers more than 4500 square miles.  Support for conservations actions like this one, makes you a "radical left Marxist" in Don Legit's deranged opinion.  So him you don't care what he thinks and vote against him in November.

Mutnomah County Sues for Climate Deception

It is the state's most populous county, deep blue, and location of Portland's metroplex.  It has joined Northwest Natural, the biggest provider of natural gas in the state to a suit filed last year alleging that seventeen fossil fuel companies deceived the public about the climate crisis.  The suit came after a record-shattering heat dome killed 69 people across the county. Research shows that climate change, caused by fossil fuel combustion, greatly exacerbated the heat wave of 2021. NW Natural is responsible for about 9% of Oregon's carbon dioxide emissions. Natural gas is mostly methane, a potent greenhouse gas, 80 times more potent in trapping heat than carbon dixoide. The suit alleges that,“NW Natural engaged in an enterprise of misrepresentation about the effects its products would have on the climate,” The company has touted its comittment to a carbon-neutral future, but has not implemented any changes that would reduce carbon emmissions according Multnomah County. 

 The lawsuit could be precedent setting, especially if successful in establishing liability for a major utility company. Advocates and lawmakers have petitioned for years to have the utility investigated by the state's Department of Justice for false advertising. Multnomah County also named an advocacy group for the first time, the Oregon Institute for Science and Medicine, which environmentalists say has spread climate denial.  Also for the first time, the international consulting firm of McKinsey & Company was sued for its work with the oil industry.  The county is one of two dozen local and state governments that have resorted to suing the fossil fuel industry for damages suffered as a result of climate change.  It asks for $50 billion for the 2021 heat dome, and an addition $1.5 billion for future damages due to climate change.  Polling shows that a majority of Americans support litigation against big oil for its role in changing the Earth's climate patterns.

TWIT: Election Scheme 2.0

His mentor

Update:  Federal District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan denied Trumpilini's request to keep the government's evidence proffer sealed until after the election.  Of course he does not want the voting public to know the massive amount of evidence the Special Counsel has collected to prove his crimes related to the January Sixth Uprising,  Chutkan quickly wrote in a brief decision that Don 'Legit's' political concerns were not "judicially cognizant" to justify further delay.  She did grant him a brief 7 day extension of time for him to assess his "litigation options",  presumably to file an emergency appeal to the DC Court of Appeals or with his friends at the Supreme Court.  Unless stayed by higher authority, the public will get to know the redacted version of the evidence annexed to the government's immunity brief before November 5th. Surprise, it's October!

credit: P. Molina

{6.10.2024} Old Don 'Legit' is the oldest candidate for president in history.  At 78 his deterioration is beginning to show so much that even the New York Times is commenting on it. Up until now the coverage of the age question has been totally one-sided--against Joe Biden. It lit\terally forced him out of the race after his questionable debate performance. The CMM has given the Ochre Menace a pass on the issue of cognitive decline. This is what the Times had to say:

He rambles, he repeats himself, he roams from thought to thought — some of them hard to understand, some of them unfinished, some of them factually fantastical. He voices outlandish claims that seem to be made up out of whole cloth. He digresses into bizarre tangents about golf, about sharks, about his own “beautiful body". He relishes“a great day in Louisiana after spending the day in Georgia. He expresses fear that North Korea is“trying to kill me” when he presumably means Iran. As late as last month, Mr. Trump was still speaking as if he were running against President Biden, five weeks after his withdrawal from the race.

America cannot afford a president who has a sociopathic personality. A president's finger is on the nuclear button.  His political hero is apparently William McKinley, who supported high tariffs, in an age before almost instantaneous international commerce. Simply put, the man is separated from current reality. Even his former chief of staff, John F. Kelly, called his White House, "Crazytown". You decide.

Update: Judge Chutkan ruled that no more briefs will be filed before the election. She did allow the defendant to file a Sur-reply after the election and gave him more pages. This totals four briefs, two for each side,  However, the 200 page appendix of evidence with footnotes already filed under seal by the government will be released before the election.  

{02.10.2024}The old saying goes to be careful what you wish for because you might get it.  When the Supreme Court commanded a "factbound" review by Judge Chutkan to determine what acts fall into prosecutable categories, they did not anticipate that the judge would order the immediate public release of the government's factual case against Don the Con. She did exactly that this week (Wednesday). The government filed a 165 page brief containing a stunning volume of incriminating evidence against Trump The brief detailed a premeditated criminal conspiracy affecting seven states to obstruct counting electoral votes and thereby defraud the American public of their constitutional right to elect the highest public office in the land. The acts described and supported by direct evidence are beyond a reasonable doubt private acts by a desperate presidential candidate that are not subject to the immunity blanket granted by six MAGA justices. Popock is calling the brief a "mini trial" of the former president. Trump minions opposed publication screaming foul, saying the release is intended to influence the election. They conveniently forget this factual preview was imposed on the District Court by the six justices they have in their pocket. Anybody but a former president and current candidate would have been convicted months ago. 

It is worth quoting the government's proffer from the brief, which is amply supported by admissible direct evidence showing his central role in the coup attempt:

His [Trump's] efforts included lying to state officials in order to induce them to ignore true vote counts; manufacturing fraudulent electoral votes in the targeted states; attempting to enlist Vice President Michael R.Pence, in his role as President of the Senate, to obstruct Congress’s certification of the election by using the defendant’s fraudulent electoral votes; and when all else had failed, on January 6, 2021, directing an angry crowd of supporters to the United States Capitol to obstruct the congressional certification. The throughline of these efforts was deceit: the defendant’s and co-conspirators’ knowingly false claims of election fraud.*

The government's reply brief containing even more evidentiary material will be filed before the end of the month providing an "October Surprise" for the Orange Menace. America's nine-year Trumpian nightmare will come to an end if Kamala Harris is elected president, but the existing hazard demands the abolition of the tainted Electoral College compromise+, which made his plot possible. 

credit: E. Wexler
BC Idonwanna: He's doing it again!

* JD Vance, his extremist running mate, continues to deny that Don the Con lost the 2016 election, preferring instead to "focus on the future".  US Person would too if he were on the same ticket as a convicted felon.

+ Dissatisfaction with the original method of electing senators by state legislatures began in the mid 1860s with calls for reform of a system perceived to be corrupt and which sometimes ended in deadlock without representation in the US Senate. (See the life of William Clark, Montana copper plutocrat) The issue came to a head by 1892 when direct election was made part of the famous "Omaha Platform" of the Populist Party.  In 1908 Oregon became the first state to adopt a popular vote for US Senator.  Nebraska soon followed.  Ten states had popular non-binding primaries.  In 1913 the Congress adopted the 17th Amendment after ratification by three-quarters (36) of state legislatures.  

Popular election of a President by constitutional amendment is impractical given modern political conditions.  The Interstate Popular Vote Compact is a way to achieved the same result as an amendment. The Compact is nearing the 270 electoral votes needed to go into effect with 209 enacted by state legislatures and 50 more pending enactment. Congressional approval of the Compact before it goes into effect is probably required under existing legal precedent.  Sponsors of the proposal have said that they will seek such approval if the 270 threshold is reached.

New Hope for Ocelots in Texas

People do not think of ocelots (Leopardus pardalis) as being native to Texas and southwest, but they hang on to existence in two small populations on the Texas Gulf Coast. Once ranging accross the southwest, less than 100 individuals survive in the wild. It is inevitable that such a small population is beginning to suffer from inbreeding. There is hope for rescuing the small wildcat from oblivion. There is an ambitious agreement between the US Fish & Wildlife Service, conservationists and local landowners to reintroduce cats bred in captivity to suitable habitat. A 75 acre patch of suitable habitat exists to the west of current population, which would insure survival of the species in the event of a catastrophic storm killing off ocelots living along the coast. [map] The new location also would free reintroduced cats from encircling human development. The reintroduction would take place on private land in the absence of protected wildlife refuges. This condition requires the cooperation of landowners in the area. The reintroduction project grew out of a decade intense study of the feline in the wild.

The two current wild populations live in two separate locations. The larger population lives on the El Sauz Ranch, and the smaller in the Laguna Atacosta Wildlife Refuge. The Laguna Atacosta population has suffered from road collisions, and the two groups no longer interbreed, which threatens the species survival The possibility of breeding with Mexican ocelots is also problematic due to human development and construction of more boarder wall. [photo credit: Fin & Fur Films]

Reintroduction will rely on the Eastman Foundation that owns the El Sauz Ranch and the 150,000 acre San Antonio Viejo Ranch, the proposed reintroduction site. The Cesar Kleberg Reserach Institute at Texas A&M University will provide the habitat conservation and breeding expertise. The federal government provided a $12.2 contract to operate the breeding program. Ocelots will come from zoos, and perhaps in the future, from wild Mexican specimens to improve genetic diversity. Captive breed animals have one drawback, the lack of wild mothers to teach cubs how to survive. To date only one reintroduction of small felines from captive breeding has been successful: Iberian lynx in Spain and Portugal

Lack of suitable habitat, thorn scrub, is constricting factor to successful reintroduction of the native wildcat. The two existing population have good habitat, but the islands are cut off by roads, development and the South Texas Sand Sheet to the north.  The 3,000 square miles of dunes and grasslands [yellow on the map] is too open for the cats to live there.  To the west of the sand sheet lies the San Antonio Viejo Ranch contains large tracts of thorn scrub with potential for ocelots to expand deeper into their former range, even to Mexico.  Obstacles exist to such expansion, not the least of which is the border wall that may cut off access altogether in the future. Texas began its own wall building program dubbed "Operation Lodestar".  Private funding also exists for private landowners to contribute their walls to a continuous barrier that does not stop migrants, but does stop migrating wildlife. ecently, Biden waived 26 federal environmental and historical preservation rules to permit further construction in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, becoming the first Democratic president to do so.  Sprawling Brownsville and McAllen also prevent ocelots from expanding to the south, except for a hard fought coastal corridor. Because acquiring land for a border wall requires condemnation in most case, building a wall on existing border reserves is a cheaper alternative.

If the USFWS can engender private landowner cooperation there is still a lot of suitable habitat to the west of the lower Rio Grand Valley particularly between Laredo and Del Rio.  Conservationists should not give up on the idea of connecting Mexican and American wild habitat for preserving species like the ocelot.

Monkey Pox Vaccination Begins in DRC

But only after 859 people died this year of the virus. 265,000 vaccine doses donated by the US and EU were distributed in the city of Goma, epicenter of the outbreak that was declared a health emergency by WHO two months ago.  The easter province of Kivu accounts for 80% of all monkey pox cases in Africa and almost all of the deaths. {24.08.2024} Most infections occur in children under 15. The vaccine is being administered to adults in high-risk populations and frontline health care workers. About 3 million doses approved for children are expected to come from Japan soon. 

Creature Feature: Its the Season for Tarantulas

A lot of people, including US Person, like autumn. So do tarantulas (Mygalomorphae)! Dateline La Junta, Colorado:

Colorado Clerk Sentenced to Nine Years

Sixty-nine year old Tina Peters, the Mesa County Clerk, who gave access to vote counting machines to a Trump supporter, was excoriated by District Court Judge Mathew Barrett before he sentenced her to nine years imprisonment for the data breach. He told her she never took her job seriously, as well as labeling her 'a charlatan". She became a hero of election-deniers, and is unapologetic for her role in stoking fears of a stolen election. She claims "wireless devices" could have hacked the vote in Mesa County. The judge grew exasperated with her claims, telling her, "I've let you go on enough about this, the votes are the votes". Peters' actions have cost the county $1.4 million in legal fees and lost employee time according to Republican County Commissioner Cody Davis who testified at the sentencing hearing. He also added that her behavior made the county, "a national laughingstock".  She has persisted in accusing Dominion Voting Systems of Colorado, who provided Mesa County with their voting equipment, of stealing votes. Her defiance was a factor in Judge Barrett's sentencing.

Peters was convicted of three counts of attempting to influence a public official, one count of criminal impersonation, and first degree official misconduct. The Secretary of State said in response to the sentencing that Colorado will not allow any one to threaten its elections, and looks forward to another secure and successful election in November. This is the longest sentence so far for involvement in the election fraud coup led by Don the Con. US Person or 'Brand X' thinks the sentence is stiff for a first-time offender, but appropriate given the gravity of the crimes.