Judge Blocks Dakota Pipeline Project

Standing Rock Sioux have steadfast in their resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline both in and out of court.  On Wednesday of last week, the tribe was rewarded with a decision in Federal District Court that found the pipeline project in violation of key environmental laws.  District Court Judge James Boasberg wrote the US Corp of Engineers environmental assessment was inadequate.  He wrote, "The many commenters in this case pointed to serious gaps in crucial parts of the Corps’ analysis—to name a few, that the pipeline’s leak-detection system was unlikely to work, that it was not designed to catch slow spills, that the operator’s serious history of incidents had not been taken into account, and that the worst-case scenario used by the Corps of Engineers was potentially only a fraction of what a realistic figure would be—and the Corps was not able to fill any of them."

Even though oil is flowing through pipe the judge stripped the pipeline of federal permits and directed a full environmental impact statement be undertaken for the entire length of the 1,172 mile pipe, which could take years.  The regime is unrelenting hostile to environmental review of federal projects except for the most cursory assessments that reach a foregone conclusion.  When the election of 2016 was decided, Don Douche set about steamrolling the project to completion without a full environmental impact statement being completed.  The case is not over, and will undoubtedly be appealed by the owners.  But the Standing Rock tribe chairperson said the legal win was "humbling" despite the fact it took four years to convince authorities to respect the tribe's defense of their water and earth.

Tamarins Die of Human Disease

The known hothead, US Person, intends this post to take your mind off the coronavirus plague because as you know, misery loves company. Golden-maned tamarins, Leontopithecus rosalia, are beautiful monkeys that live in Brazil's Atlantic Forest. [photo below] As their name describes, adults have luxurious, colored manes surrounding their faces. [photo left] Their populations have suffered drastic declines due to fragmentation of their disappearing forest habitat and extreme poaching; they were down to just a few hundred in the 1980's.  Thanks to intensive conservation efforts that included reintroduction of zoo reared tamarins into the wild, the population was raised to 3700 by 2014.

A new, more insidious threat to the tamarins was discovered in May, 2018.  The first confirmed death of a tamarin due to yellow fever, a human disease, occurred.  Brazil had suffered a major yellow fever epidemic, the largest since vaccinations began in the late '40s; hundreds of people were killed by the mosquito borne disease in the populous southern states of Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.  Thousands more were infected.  The pathogen made the inter-species jump to tamarins, killing an estimated 30% of the species that was already endangered according to the IUCN.  Predictably, panicked humans contributed to the death rate by killing all monkeys because they believed yellow fever could be directly transmitted by  monkeys to humans.  More bad news was the fact that another primate species, the woolly spider monkey, was also decimated by the contagion.

a mother with two infants, credit: A. Martens

Yellow fever is believed to have been transmitted to the Americas by transported slaves from Africa.  The disease first appeared in Recife, Brazil 1685.  Since it is pathogen not endemic to the Americas, native monkeys have no natural resistance to the disease. A combination of climate change and deforestation in areas that serve as buffer zones between tropical forest and urban areas has allowed yellow fever to spread.  Scientists worry that yellow fever outbreaks may become a regular occurance in the Atlantic Forest remnants where the tamarins now hang on to survival.  It once stretched along South America's Atlantic coast from Venezuela to Argentina, now because of logging, charcoal production, agriculture and urbanization it is now just 2% of its original extent, chopped up into fragments.  But it is home to 22 of Brazil's 77 primate species.

There is some hope for the tamarin, if it recovers from the latest onslaught.  A vaccine for monkeys has been developed based on the human yellow fever vaccine.  No one has vaccinated wild primates before, so the effort to protect  surviving tamarins is fraught with challenges.  No licenses or permissions exist to conduct such a vaccination program in Brazil, and the ethical question of un- vaccinated humans remains.  Administering the vaccine to five hundred wild tamarins in a cost effective way has also not been determined.

EPA Stops Environmental Regulation Because Coronavirus

More: Something equally cynical is being done to Social Security.  Corporations will be allowed to suspend their contributions to the trust fund for the rest of the year as part of the $2 trillion, mostly corporate bail out..  The fact is that the market idolators who control the Senate and Executive will use any excuse they can, including a dangerous pandemic, to undermine any laws they consider to be 'socialistic'.  They want to return to an America before the New Deal.

How much more cynical and manipulative can this neo-facist regime become?  Apparently much more, as the EPA announced it will "temporarily" stop enforcement of its regulations on business and industry during the crisis and rely on self-regulating--an invitation to ignore pollution laws retroactive to March 13th. Companies violating pollution regulations will not be cited by the agency and monitoring will cease for an indefinite period. The EPA, now headed by a coal lobbyist, has become a ghost agency overrun by anti-regulation politicos.

The oil industry aggressively lobbied for this abdication of governmental oversight. American Petroleum Institute (API) executives wrote to both the Antichrist and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) asking that they temporarily waive “non-essential compliance obligations”.  These include in the industry's jaundiced view delaying requirements for greenhouse gas reporting, providing flexibility on monitoring sampling and analysis required for drinking water permits and add certain delays or deferrals to pollution monitoring including reporting and repair of leaks. It is blatantly obvious these requests have nothing to do with the epidemic, but represent another cynical attempt to dismantle environmental protection laws polluting industries consider burdensome. 

I have not spoken from hiding

nor from a dark place of the Earth,

And I have not said to the descendants of Jacob,

"Look for me in an empty waste...." 

--Isaiah 45, 19 

 

'Toontime: White Wash

Still more: More evidence of the Antichrist's denial of reality and sociopathic impulses.There were classified intelligence reports in January and February warning of a possible pandemic. The intelligence reports tracked the spread of the disease in China and that governments attempts to minimize the problem.  The regime took no action to prepare for an eventual outbreak in the US.

credit: Christopher Weyant, Boston Globe
Wackydoodle sez: Spreads fast too! 

More: Rationing of ventilators has already begun in Michigan.  In 2003 the GAO warned, “few hospitals have adequate medical equipment, such as ventilators, that are often needed for respiratory infections.” In 2017 the CDC repeated a similar warning: “Substantial concern exists that intensive care units (ICUs) might have insufficient resources to treat all persons requiring ventilator support."  A 2015 study by the CDC found a severe flu epidemic would require 60,000 additional ventilators. When approached by the regime to produce more ventilators, the profiteers at GM demanded hundreds of millions up front and a price tag of about $18,000 per ventilator.  The 'great deal maker' balked at the price; the total bill of $1.5 billion is comparable to 18 F-35s, the Pentagon's infamously over-budget, advanced fighter.  Eventually GM came round when the regime threatened to use the Defense Production Act to force the company to comply with the demand.  None of the expected ventilators will be available for use until early summer, too late for the expected surge in demand in the next two months. Currently GM factories are idle in response to the pandemic. Last year GM posted $6.5 billion in profits.  Medicare for All too expensive?  You decide.

{27.03.20} Don Douche has been absolving himself of responsibility his entire life.  You cannot expect him to change just because he sits in the room without corners; after all, privilege bestowed by inherited wealth has worked for him in the past.

The ugly, whispered truth of the current regime has now been confirmed in writing: lives are less important than profits in an end-stage capitalist economy. Last Sunday, Donald Trump declared on Twitter: “WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF. AT THE END OF THE 15 DAY PERIOD, WE WILL MAKE A DECISION AS TO WHICH WAY WE WANT TO GO!”  It was another well known authoritarian, Joseph Stalin, who allegedly said,  “One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic.”  In the view of the neo-fascistic Trumpists who embrace a cult of death (remember the Tottenkopf insignia?), if you are over seventy, you are expendable. 


Keeping the goon in office is necessary for continuing the legalized looting by corporations and their fat cat enablers.  Thus, this piece of screed from the midnight tweeter: "The LameStream Media is the dominant force in trying to get me to keep our Country closed as long as possible in the hope that it will be detrimental to my election success. The real people want to get back to work ASAP.  We will be stronger than ever before!"  Notice that if you want to protect your health and your family's health and spare the country a worsening epidemic, you are not "real people" but a good for nothing, lazy, socialist freeloader.

And you Mr. & Mrs. 'Merica made a big mistake when you voted against Bernie Sanders, who has spent his life attempting to save you from yourself.  Remember this fact, folks: the death corps will receive $500 billion in another massive bailout to further enrich their stock-owning executives--you get $1200 to pay your mounting bills, while you beg for lesser work.  Does that sound like a democratic society to you?  No, it is predatory, gangster capitalism and it is coming after you and your family*.

credit: C. Weyant, Boston Globe

*Question: Do you know why the 1918 Influenza Pandemic, which killed nearly 700,000 in the United States, was called the "Spanish Flu"?  Answer: No, it was not a racist slur, but reflected the fact that Spain was neutral in World War I, and its press was therefore largely uncensored.  The combatant countries in Europe and the US censored stories about the Pandemic for fear of undermining their war effort.  Spanish newspapers were full of stories about the rapid, global spread of the swine flu and its potency--some patients would turn blue from lack of oxygen before dying--hence, the misnomer, "Spanish" flu.  One resident doctor described the current situation at New York's public Elmhurst Hospital in Queens as "apocalyptic". Meanwhiile, social distancing at the VWH by a group of GOP:

Don Douche Cannot Even Follow Pandemic Playbook

The incompetent poser in office, Don Trumpillini, was briefed in 2017 by the National Security Counsel of the existence of a "pandemic playbook" providing a step by step checklist of actions to take in the event of a "high consequence infectious disease threat".  Because he is a science denying fool enslaved to the plutocrats of Wall Street, he choose to deal with the pandemic by parading a rotating circus of clowns before the corporate mass media to deny the seriousness, or extent of the emerging threat.  Politico reports that the sixty-nine page white paper lays out hundreds of strategies and tactics to use in combating a pandemic like the one the world is experiencing right now.  The paper includes consideration of using executive powers under the Defense Production Act to insure adequate supplies of medical equipment and PPE, a move the magical thinkers of capitalism have resisted on the grounds: "socialism".  Perhaps "positive thinking" will suffice to end the pandemic.  NOT!  So far, the regime, at the behest of its capitalist owners, has lagged behind the timelines for action contained in the NSC playbook.

Solely out of concern for declining profits, the Antichrist in Office wants to pack the churches by Easter.  In other words public health is to take a risky back seat to propping up the bottom lines of corporations.  The pandemic did not take the regime by surprise, just one of the many lies Don Trumpillini has used to misinform the public.  The regime was warned by the outgoing administration to be prepared for a potential pandemic, as well as a precautionary exercise that health officials undertook to model a global infectious disease threat, called "Crimson Contagion".  The NSC playbook is even color coded so an idiot like Don Trumpillini can follow it--green for normal operations, yellow for elevated threat, orange for credible threat, and red once a public health emergency is declared.

The playbook details steps to take if there’s evidence that the virus is spreading among humans, which the World Health Organization concluded by Jan. 22, or the U.S. government declares a public health emergency, which HHS Secretary Alex Azar did on Jan. 31. Officials now privately concede that the administration’s well-documented testing problems have contributed to the outbreak’s silent spread across the United States. Instead of taking decisive actions that would have saved lives, the modern-day Nero twitted away, exhibiting his sociopath tendencies for the world to see*.  US Cases: 125,161.  US Deaths: 2,194 (1.8%)

*Compare the regime's fumbling efforts to contain SARS CoV-2 the previous government's response to the H1N1 swine flue epidemic of 2009.  This from Pro Publica: Almost from the day the H1N1 strain of flu was identified, researchers set out to develop a vaccine for it. Six days after the first case was identified in April 2009, the CDC began working to develop a candidate vaccine virus. Clinical trials began in July. And on Sept. 15, the Food and Drug Administration approved four 2009 H1N1 influenza vaccines. The first doses of the vaccine were available in October, and by December, 100 million doses were available to be ordered...about 81 million U.S. residents were vaccinated  Granted, this virus is novel, so a vaccine will not be as quickly available, but the testing failure and attempts to mislead the public is the regime's responsibility.  They know that the current broken health care system in the US cannot handle a high infection rate of a disease that has ten time the lethality of the flu; so there is no motivation to provide wide-spread, free testing. Do the math: at 40% infection rate there would be 120 million cases and approximately 2.4 million deaths, an unprecedented number.  What you are witnessing is simply an intentional policy of social Darwinism

African Parks Shut to Protect Apes

Virunga National Park in Democratic Republic of Congo shut its entrance to visitors in an effort to protect the mountain gorillas (Gorilla beringei beringei) that live there. It is not known if SARS CoV-2 (corona virus) can make the interspecies jump from humans to great apes, but it is certainly possible since the two share 95% of the same genetic material, and there is abundant scientific evidence that great apes are susceptible to human pathogens. IUCN has advised site managers to take precautions to prevent the spread of the infection that could exterminate already critically endangered species. The virus has killed 26,000 humans worldwide (3/26). Ebola virus is believed to have killed 5,500 gorillas in the Lossi Sanctuary between 2001 and 2005. Only about 604 mountain gorillas remain in the Virunga Mountains which border on DRC and Uganda. Their slow increase in numbers after tittering on the brink of extinction despite tremendous threats is considered a conservation success story of first rank.

Kabirizi's family, credit: N. Osborne

Even mild respiratory diseases in humans can kill gorillas. In 2009 human metapneumonvirus killed a mother gorilla and her 3 day old infant. Park rangers often wear masks when in close proximity of their charges. SARS CoV-2 has already made one species jump. Scientists think the virus may have jumped from bats to humans. There are unverified reports that the first virus cases in Wuhan started in a market where bush meat is sold. Chinese people have a reputation of consuming types of wild food that westerners consider abhorrent. Perhaps this unconfirmed story is why the racist Il Douche insists on calling the disease, the "Chinese Virus".

human village on the edge of Virunga NP, credit N. Osborne

Rwanda has also officially closed three of its parks that are home to apes. Uganda's remain open, but western countries from which most tourists come have stopped flights to Uganda. Gorillas and apes are a huge tourist draw, and most of the gorillas in the Virunga area are accustom to human visitors.  The park closures will certainly affect the fragile economies of the countries that are home to these precious few cousins. Virunga National Park revenue is expected to fall by 40%.  The IUCN has called for two precautions to be strictly followed by anyone who works with and around great apes: one is to maintain a distance of at least 7 meters (23 feet), and ideally 10 meters (33 feet). The second is that no one who is clinically ill should visit the apes.  Even persons not having overt symptoms can be infected and spread the disease.   Meanwhile, the gorillas are being monitored by their human custodians for signs of infection.

Judge Blocks Logging the Tongass

The largest in-tact remnant of temperate rain forest in North America, the Tongass, has been the target of loggers for decades.  A running battle has been waged by conservationists to protect it.  The latest skirmish resulted in a victory for environmentalists earlier this month when the Federal District Court for Alaska ruled that the Forest Service violated multiple environmental law provisions when it attempted to issue a broad management plan for the forest that would allow logging without individual site specific environmental impact assessments.  The Forest Service's attempt to promulgate a non-specific logging policy for Prince of Wales Island is part of the regime's larger effort to gut the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA), which was signed into law by a Repugnant president. (Nixon)  This Act has been the mainstay of environmental protection policy for half a century.

The 16.7 million acre Tongass is the nation's largest forest and the center of debate over the proper use of federal lands--resource exploitation or preservation of wild lands.  With the widespread recognition of global warming as a major threat to the nation's future security--except among religious and political extremists--the debate has become more contentious.

In her ruling Judge Gleason, appointed by Barack Obama, wrote that the Forest Service management plan was insufficient to satisfy the requirements of NEPA and violated provisions of the Tongass forest plan and the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, which protects the rights of subsistence hunters.  The plan for Prince of Wales island would have allowed 23,000 acres of old-growth and 19,000 acres of younger trees to be felled, plus the construction of 164 miles of roads.  Logging activity in the Tongass has fallen off over the years, and loggers constantly complain of the burden of environmental regulation.  The plan under review would have eliminated the need to conduct site specific impact assessments.  Trump officials have embraced the Forest Service approach “as a way to lock in logging over huge areas over vast lengths of time.” according to an attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the plaintiffs in the case.  A temporary injunction was obtained against plan implementation in 2019 and will remain in effect until the case is finally resolved.

If Its Good for the Fish....

What happens when you slavishly follow the non-stop lies coming from the Antichrist in Office?  Answer: you poison yourself to death.  That is what happened to a Trump true believer in Arizona, who ingested chloroquine phosphate, an aquarium cleaner, because Il Douche told him the anti-malarial drug chloroquinine is effective against COVID-19.  The stupidity of Trump Believers apparently has no bounds.  A man and his wife were hospitalized after ingesting the chemical. Listed in critical condition, the wife survived; the husband died of cardiac arrest. There is minimal scientific evidence that chloroquine is safe and effective, but that did not sway these True Believers.  In the absence of a vaccine, other countries have tried using choloroquine and hydroxychloroquine in severe COVID-19 treatment as a desperate effort to save life, but there have been no controlled studies anywhere showing that it is safe and effective. There are reports from Nigeria that people have been hospitalized for chloroquine poisoning. There are, however, clinical trials in progress in response to some favorable anecdotal evidence. 

The couple was in their sixties, and lived in Maricopa County. Neither had been tested for corona virus.  The director of the local poisoning and drug information center said self-administering of an a chemical made for cleaning fish tanks was "incredibly foolish and dangerous".  So was voting for the Antichrist in office.  Apparently the victims were influenced by reading internet material about COVID-19, including misinformation from the Very White House. So US Person would like to repeat this public service message: AT PRESENT THERE IS NO KNOWN CURE FOR COVID-19.  The death rate in the United States from the disease is only around 2%, and mostly seriously affects individuals with compromised immune systems.  If you have symptoms, see a doctor, and do not swallow bleach or aquarium cleaner!

COTW: COVID-19 Is the Trigger Event

This chart reveals the underlying weakness of the "Everything Bubble" economy. The pandemic is the trigger event for a collapse that was coming anyway:

Empire State Manufacturing index was released last Monday with sobering news: the index turned strongly negative with the largest drop ever. This occurred before the near economic shutdown caused by fear of the spread of infection, as responses from purchasing managers were due before March 15th. It is undeniable that partial quarantines--aka "social distancing--for an extended period (eighteen months?) will make a weak economy built on debt, money printing, and asset inflation even worse.

Coronavirus is hardly a "black swan" event despite what the liar-in-chief spews from his propaganda pulpit* Pandemics have occurred throughout human history, the last worldwide killer occurring only a century ago. And now that non rich 'Mericans have voted decisively against socialized medicine (Thank you, Joe Gramps), they will reap the whirlwind and end up unemployed (Goldman Sachs: 2.25 million), if not dead.  Because capitalism does not solve social problems, it exploits them.

*Il Douche on COVID-19:
Jan. 22: “We have it totally under control”
Feb. 28: “This is their new hoax”; "One day, it’s like a miracle. It will disappear.”
 Mar. 9: “Last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. Think about that!”
Mar. 13: “I don’t take responsibility at all.”
Mar. 16: “You were surprised. We were all surprised.”
March 17: “I’ve felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.”
March 18: “It snuck up on us.”
South Korea has tested 290K people, and its corona virus outbreak is largely under control. The US has only tested 60,000 and cases are exploding.  It took the Imperial College of London to shake the regime out of its capitalist stupor [chart above] Unmitigated, the virus could kill 2.2 million in the US according to the epidemiological study. That death toll is politically unacceptable, even for free market goons. The scientist who led the British study is infected with the virus.

'Toontime: The Rudderless Ship of State

credit: Steve Sack

The perps at the helm are good at one thing only: self-serving enrichment at everyone else"s expense.  Il Douche is collecting millions for his golf outings and VIP stays at his hotel chain.  The Repugnant chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Richard Burr, sold million of dollars in stock before the market nose dived thirty percent using briefing information about the severity of the pandemic and its likely economic impact, while publicly belittling the pandemic's severity. He gave the same month he dumped his stocks a speech to a group of “well-connected players” where he compared the coronavirus to the 1918 flu pandemic, while Trump was telling the American public that they had nothing to worry about. Burr was one of only three senators to vote against the 2012 STOCK Act, which banned insider trading by members of Congress.

Airlines, which spent about $47 billion buying back their own stock will get another $58 billion in subsidies from the 'free market' lunatics in charge of the Senate. The graft never stops.

credti: Adam Zyglis, Buffalo News

COTW: Virus & Panic Spreads

Latest: The stock market crashed again today, setting off a circuit breaker. The 'feel good' index, so often touted by the criminal in office, went below the level at which he was inaugurated! Like Ben & Jerry's, justice comes in different flavors.  West Virginia reported its first case of Covid-19 yesterday.  There are now confirmed cases (7803 according to CDC) in all 50 states. One hundred seven infected persons, at least, have died. (2%)

More: History can teach us; we ignore it at our peril, as the proverb reminds us. The deadly 1918 flu pandemic, misnamed the "Spanish" flu, actually began in Kansas among soldiers crowed into an army camp.  That pandemic had three waves of infection lasting 3-4 weeks among young, generally healthy soldiers, and 6-8 weeks in the general population. The virus mutates in adaptation to its host during each wave.  Today, China has already experienced the first wave of infections with the number of cases subsiding, and its scientists have detected two strains of the virus. The US is still in the midst of the first wave that may subside once warmer weather is prevalent.

War ravaged Italy was hit hard by the 1918 pandemic.  Once again Italy is suffering more than its European neighbors.  Italy is densely inhabited with an aging population.  Coronavirus affects those with compromised immune systems the most. Italians are also world famous for their fondness for intimacy.  World health authorities are suggesting social distancing as a way to contain the virus' spread. Travel bans are also an effective method of containment.  Australia, despite having troops in Europe at the war's end, largely escaped the 1918 pandemic, due to shutting down its borders to travel in or out of the country.

The private medical industry was not very helpful during 1918, and we are experiencing that failure again.  Large swaths of the population were made ill by high doses of aspirin, the wonder drug of the day, which increased the death rate according to research done in 2007.  Throwing money at a for profit system will do wonders for companies' stock price, but produce nothing useful until at least two waves of infection have worked their way through the population.  The industry has not even provided enough test kits to allow comprehensive testing.  The fact that actor Tom Hanks (diabetes) and his wife were tested early for Covid-19 is because they were in Australia, which has socialized medicine and enough test kits.  Hanks was released from hospital recently, but his wife Rita is still sick.  US Person wants to thank a reader for this information.


{17.03.20}The map shows the locus of coronavirus infections in the US.  Typically, the nation's largest ports of entry are showing the most cases.  Unlike the EU, the US has not yet closed its borders to non-essential, international travel. Doctors estimate that for every reported case, there are 5-10 infections that go unreported.  Only West Virginia seems to be spared, but that is probably due to little or no testing, and unreported infections by the airborne virus. Worldwide more than 6600 people have died, with 73 fatalities in the US so far (2%).  Il Douche finally admitted the gravity of the situation in a press conference today. As a reward for his reluctant truth-telling, his biggest fan, the stock market cratered. (Down 12% in the worst day of trading since the "Black Monday" crash of October 1987). What Covid-19 tells us about the country is the sorry state of its national public health system.  Die-hard Malthusian zealots are hell-bent on preventing social medicine in the US, but profit driven companies have absolutely no incentive to stock free vaccines, medical supplies and equipment, or surplus hospital capacity.

Asking states and municipalities to pick up those left-behind is like asking the fox to count the chickens in the henhouse.  A Kentucky health official responsible for seven rural counties admitted to reporters, “We have no capacity when something like this happens,” referring to the coronavirus epidemic.  Budget cuts to the public health system have not been fully restored since the Great Recession of 2008.  State and local health departments have lost a quarter of their work forces.  Yet Il Douche had the ignorant temerity to tell governors to look for the own ventilators, hospital beds and other equipment that will be needed as the virus continues its parabolic course of infection.  An epitome of a free market mythologist, he has agreed with Democrats for emergency public funding to combat the spread of the corona virus, but as one Washington public health advocacy group recently concluded, “chronic under funding has presented a consistent obstacle” to the nation’s public health systems.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell by M. Ricolli, credit: WolfStreet Corp.

Giant Sabre Tooth Roamed South America

credit: A. manzuetti

A Researcher in Uruguay found in the storerooms of the National Natural History museum in Montevideo perhaps the largest Similodon skull ever discovered.  Scientists knew that sabre-tooth cats could grow large, but the skull indicates this particular Similodon populator weighed in at 960 pounds, or big enough to take down the largest Pleistocene herbivores approaching 3 tons in size, such as the giant ground sloth, Megatherium. An amateur collector dug up the fossil in 1989 and donated it to the museum. Imagine a fierce feline predator twice the size of an African lion equipped with eight inch canines--a horrific image from the collective unconscious!  The first arriving humans would have been all but helpless against such a massive apex predator. 

art credit: m. anton

During the Pleistocene, South America was home to three species of Similodon as well as jaguars, lions, and Arctotherium, the largest known bear on the planet.  The rapid disappearance of megafauna in the Americas has been a puzzle for paleontologists, but new evidence points to a combination of factors: human migration and climate change.  A cat as big as S. populator would need to feed on large animals like the giant armadillo that grew to the size of a VW car.  When those began to die off due to habitat loss and human encroachment, its fate was also sealed--a lesson for our times.

'Toontime: Hysterical Flu

credit: Bob Englehart

US Person's advice: don't panic, carry on, and stop hording toilet paper!  Yes, the pandemic is bad; yes, Il Douche, the science denier, under-performed again; and yes, stay home if you are ill.  But it is not the flu pandemic of 1918 that killed an estimated 50,000,000 world wide, nor even the swine flu of 2009 that killed 18,000.  If all you watch on your screens is the nervous news, you will make yourself sick.

credit: David Fitzsimmons, Arizona Star 
BC Idonwanna sez: Wash mouth with soap!

Colorado Votes On Wolves

art credit: Amy Hamilton

The last known wolf died in Colorado in 1945; its death was long and tormented, the victim of a steel-jawed trap set by federal agents bent on killing another alleged sheep killer.  Some things have changed in the last half century.  Many Coloradans now support wolf reintroduction to the state as a valued member of healthy, wild ecosystems. Recent polls are evidence of this sea change in public opinion.  Seizing the opportunity to protect the wolf, wolf advocates succeeded in collecting more than 200,000 signatures to put the issue of wolf reintroduction on the November ballot.  Initiative 107 has generated action on both sides of the wolf divide.  Legislation has been introduced in the state senate to make wolf management a subject of legislatiive control.  State wildlife officials have been reluctant to act due to the public controversy surrounding wolf recovery.

While the humans debate, the wolves have acted on their own. Colorado Parks and Wildlife reports that a pack of at least six wolves now resides in northwest Colorado.  Initiative 107 raises a fundamental question about species reintroduction.  Should science decide the issue or should the public, which has to live with the consequences of returning an apex predator to a region from which it has been absent for 70 years?  The reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park in 1995 is generally seen as a conservation success story; preliminary data showed a beneficial trophic cascade {11.5.17} as a result of wolves preying on too numerous elk browsing the landscape.  But since then the effect of wolves on the Yellowstone ecosystem is not considered so clearly beneficial by the scientific community.

Colorado is not Yellowstone.  It is steadily growing in population, especially along the Front Range, but growth is also occurring on the once rural western slope of the Rockies, driven by the shale oil boom.  There are a lot of human hunters at large too.  Whether the reintroduction of wolves in the state would be a good idea from a biological stand point is a question not easily answered. Science is not adept at answering questions of moral value, but the Endangered Species Act of 1973 does speak of intangible values--according to the act endangered species provide “esthetic, ecological, educational, historical, recreational, and scientific value to the Nation.”   The people of Colorado will get a chance to decide whether the welcome mat is out for a once feared and loathed predator.  Perhaps this is as it should be in what remains of democracy in the United States. If voters give the green light, the first few wolves will be released to the San Juan Mountains in 2023.

COTW: Pandemic Blues

The recent stock market gyrations may have induced vertigo, if not nausea. Radical US Person suggests: gold.  Why?  Look at these charts courtesy of Marketoracle.co.uk

 

The shaded area are financial crises, the last two being the dotcom meltdown and the Great Recession of 2008  Obviously gold is considered to be a good investment when the stock market is tanking.  The next crises, call it the debt crisis, is coming.  The recent shock to the markets was triggered by the pandemic, but is more a symptom of the weakness of the global economy fueled by massive amounts of debt, both public and private.  So which would you rather hold during a financial crises, cash or gold?  The answer provided by the next charts is: gold.

With the rise in global economic insecurity, investors are flocking to gold as the strong correlation between an insecurity index and gold flows shows in the left hand chart.  The fact that investors are choosing gold bullion instead of gold based securities is shown in the right hand chart. Even central banks are making massive gold bullion purchases, and they usually know more than Joe Blow.  The reason for their preference is clear:

Since the turn of the 20th century the dollar has witnessed a massive decline in purchasing power indicated by the green line.  Since Tricky D took the US off the gold standard of $35 an ounce the value of gold increase fifty times.

More Repugnant Dirty Tricks

Haunted by the undeniable fact that they represent a declining minority of "Mericans, the GOP (Greedy Old Plutocrats) has regularly resorted to dirty tricks to influence election results, perhaps the most famous being the burglary of the DNC's Watergate office. Fast forward to today* and the news is of Eric Prince, the GOP operative and brother of Betsy De Vos the Education Secretary. He was also the head of Blackwater Worldwide, the infamous security ops firm that was responsible for the massacre of Iranian civilians in Nasour Square during the US occupation of that country (2007).

New York Times reports that Prince helped recruit former spies for secret infiltration operations against labor organizations, Democratic congressional campaigns and other groups hostile to the Antichrist's regime.  An individual Prince recruited is a former MI-6 (British Foreign Intelligence) spy named Richard Seddon who ran an operation to infiltrate and copy documents at the American Federation of Teachers, one of the nation's largest teachers' unions in 2917.  That same year, the congressional campaign of Abigail Spanberger,a former CIA agent herself was targeted for infiltration.  The agent was discovered and fired.  Both operations were funded by the infamous Project Veritas, a right wing organization which received notoriety for its sting operations against news organizations.  The latest revelations come from lawsuit discovery between the teachers' union and Veritas. Both Veritas and Prince have close ties to the Trump camp. Prince worked with former national security advisor Michael J. Flynn during the regime's transition period.  He also advocated privatizing the war in Afghanistan by deploying mercenaries instead of US soldiers.  The idea was rejected by the then Secretary of Defense, Gen. Jim Mattis.

Prince reportedly wanted to use former professional spies to train Veritas personnel in surreptitious data collection and recruiting sources against perceived enemies. Prince is supposedly under investigation by the Department of Barr for lying about meeting a Russian banker in the Seychelles Islands in January, 2017.  Veritas has gone from a shoestring operation to more than $8.6 million in contributions according to its latest available tax return (2018).  The Trump Foundation gave the group $20,000 in 2015, the year Don Trumpillini began his improbable presidential election campaign.  In 2018 the head of the organization, James O'Keefe, stated in a book he wrote that Trumpillini wanted his organization to infiltrate Columbia University to obtain records of Barack Obama, who was once a student there.

The operation inside the Michigan teachers' union, code named Liberty U after the undercover intern's alma mater, apparently netted a lot of documents.  These included statements by a local union leader about Betsy De Vos, who is ardently opposed to teachers' unions.  Prince and De Vos grew up in Michigan were there father made a fortune in the auto parts industry.  Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, said in a statement: “Let’s be clear who the wrongdoer is here: Project Veritas used a fake intern to lie her way into our Michigan office, to steal documents and to spy — and they got caught. We’re just trying to hold them accountable for this industrial espionage.”  Veritas claims its activities are protected under the First Admendment.  The union has asked for more than $3 million in damages.

*Massive voter suppression took place in the 2019 Democratic primary in Texas.  Texas is run by Repugnants, and hundreds of polling places were closed down for this primary resulting in "punishingly" long lines to vote. Voting estimates in Harris County (Houston) and Dallas County show that Democratic turnout rose about 45 percent.

'Toontime: Will History Repeat Itself?

credit:Steve Kelly 
Wackydoodle sez: Repeat after me, O-B-A-M-A, O-B-A-M-A...

Answer: Possibly. Two definitive developments: Elizabeth Warren needs to prove she is a real progressive by endorsing Bernie Sanders.  She came third in her own state. Bloomberg failed to buy the nomination; but he impressed American Samoans.  Michigan will be the litmus test for the two remaining male septuagenarians.

The Democratic Party establishment coalesced quickly this week to endorse its candidate for the nomination, former Vice President Joe Biden. Both establishment alternatives, Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttegieg, conveniently withdrew from the presidential race just before South Carolina voted; the effect was predictable. They were reluctant to endorse Biden until Bernie Sanders won three straight primaries. Biden finally broke through in the South Carolina contest with older black voters, who fondly recall his support for the nation's first black president. Propping up Joe 'Gramps' was the party's play call, and it worked

Sanders is taking on the plutocracy full bore at this point.  His call for radical change is resonating with the 99%; the need for more social equity has never been more apparent since the days of the Gilded Age.  Contrary to what Biden claims, Senator Sanders has put forward a plan--a modern Omaha Platform--paying for his ambitious social agenda including Medicare for All: a combination of increased taxes on the ultra-wealthy, Wall Street speculation, and spending cuts for a bloated military-industrial complex that is the largest in the world.

This social revolution can only work if masses of people support the candidate that has been promoting the same policies for most of his adult political life, not just a campaign meme written by a campaign aide.  A democratic mass movement has happened before in the history of this nation in the form of the Populist Movement, which appeared in the last quarter of 19th century.  By the end of the Democratic convention in 1896 the agrarian revolt represented by the Peoples' Party expired in the arms of the Democratic Party led by "free silver" advocate William Jennings Bryant, who was funded by western state silver magnates in favor of bimetallic currency.  The Peoples' Party was ultimately not successful in resting control from the plutocracy, but was co-opted by it. Only you can prevent history from repeating itself.

credit: S. Kelly BC 
Idonwanna sez: Ol' Joe dog face pony soldier!

COTW: Corona Virus Spreads Further

The WHO declared its second highest level of warning for the corona virus epidemic, just below the level of pandemic. So far the CoVID-19 appears to be more deadly than influenza, but less deadly that the Asian swine flu (H1N1) that killed more than twelve thousand in the United States alone (equivalent to 1 in 5 infections).  Health officials still hope to contain the virus' spread which is aided by international travel to zones of high infection [map]  The disease is already having an economic effect.  The OECD has cut its forecast for 2020 global economic output.  Worst case scenarios put Europe into recession and the US into zero growth.  Normally pro-private market pundits are calling on world governments to take aggressive action to contain the disease. It will take a lot more intelligent action than just pious prayers to do that.*

Meanwhile, the state of Washington reported four more deaths at the Kirkland nursing home facility bringing the US death total to six.  King County (Seattle) has declared a state of emergency. Globally, 85,000 people have been infected as of Saturday, according to a tracker maintained by Johns Hopkins University, and more than 2,900 infected people have died (3.4%).

*In fact, VP Pence botched a public health emergency when he was the governor of Indiana.  Faced with an HIV outbreak in a rural Indiana county, he refused at first to make hygienic needles freely available to control infection by intravenous means.  Pence has a record as a science denier.  In 2000 he wrote an op-ed saying smoking does not kill. Yet he was named by the Antichrist in Office to lead the government's response to the corona virus epidemic. Reactionary talking head are accusing the Democrats of 'weaponizing' news about the epidemic's spread in an effort to bring down Der Leader.  There is a chaotic effort to control information by the regime. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, denied that he'd been muzzled.  Dr. Fauci was scheduled to appear on the five Sunday morning talk shows and canceled them all. Mike Pence showed up instead.

Virus Spreads to Stock Market

Latest: The US recorded its first two fatalities from the corona virus spreading through the country over the weekend. Both cases were older adults with underlying health issues.  The number of reported cases is now 91, but experts think that is an underestimate due to restrictive testing criteria.  Those criteria have since be replaced with wide spread testing protocols.  Some testing kits were also discovered to be defective.  Over the weekend 15,000 kits were released by the federal government, and a spokesperson said it was working with a private provider to make 50,000 more available soon.  The states of New York, Florida and Rhode Island each reported their first cases, all linked to recent foreign travel.

A genetic analysis of cases at a Kirkland, WA nursing home where an outbreak hotspot occurred indicates that the virus could have been spreading in the community for six weeks prior to being detected by testing. Officials estimate as many 1500 people may be infected.  One resident has died and three more are in critical condition.  An epidemiologist with the Washington State Department of Health said he knows of doctors who suspected coronovirus infection that were unable to get patients tested prior to the change in testing criteria. For example, a Seattle physician presented with low grade fever and coughing in a patient who had traveled to China, was unable to obtain corona virus testing for her because she had returned more than two weeks ago. The state is now ramping up to 200 tests per day to obtain more accurate sampling of the disease spread.  

{25.02.20} A Harvard epidemiologist, Dr. Marc Lipstich, interviewed by The Atlantic magazine, says the COVID-19 epidemic has probably infected about 200 people in the US.  Confirmed cases are reported as 35.  He predicts that worldwide about 40-70% will be infected with the corona virus that causes COVID-19.  Fortunately, the fatality rate is estimated less than 2%, but the virus has already killed more people than SARS and MERS to which it is related. Many infected humans will be asymptomatic or have only mild, flu-like responses. The emerging consensus among epidemiologists is that COVID-19 will become an endemic, seasonal disease like the other four that regularly afflict humanity. Humans apparently do not develop long lasting immunity to diseases like colds and flu.

Despite misleading media reports, there is no available vaccine.  A company has replicated a portion of the virus' RNA in the laboratory, but that is only a first step to producing a vaccine, which must be tested before widespread administration.  The trick to producing an effective, safe vaccine is to find the right position on an RNA molecule, or gene sequence, that produces immunity and not acute inflammation.  That takes time, money and a bit of art.  During the SARS outbreak in 2003, researchers needed 20 months from isolating a genome sequence to developing a vaccine ready for phase I clinical trials. Allowing for improvements in the process, it still could be 12 months before a vaccine is ready for widespread use. No giant pharma company has committed to producing a COVID-19 vaccine, and the current regime has recently proposed cutting funding for pandemic preparedness in its budget documents. Don Trumpellini is reportedly furious with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention over briefings given to the public and the resultant drop in the market due to panicking investors. He apparently intends to rely on propaganda instead of science in his response to a possible pandemic

{25.02.20} The coronovirus epidemic has got Wall Streek spooked. Stocks dropped again with the Street of Dreams posting the largest decline in two years for the S&P index. The ten year Treasury note is headed for a record low too.  Midst the angst, the Center for Disease Control warned that a coronovirus outbreak will occur in the US. The Center warned that an outbreak here is a matter of time, and it could be severe.  So far the fatality rate globally is less than 3%, much less than SARS, which is caused by a variety of the same virus family.  Respiratory viruses like these can travel through the air, enveloped in tiny droplets that are produced when a sick person breathes, talks, coughs or sneezes. More than 80,000 people have caught the virus and nearly 2,700 of them have died, mostly in China. A vaccine for the virus is more than a year away. Health officials advise washing hands frequently, and if you are sick, stay away from work or school.