'Toontime: Dire Straits

credit: RJ Matson

We are undoubtedly living in one of the darkest times in American history: confronting a public health crisis of biblical proportions that precipitated an economic contraction rivaled only by the Great Depression.  Our government is disrupted by a death-denying executive who achieves perverse satisfaction from deceit, provocation and outrage.  Several commentators have observed that this nadir is a predictable outcome of a decades long decay of political institutions, militarism, and desertion of social democratic policies.

To mention just one contributing failing: the over-reaction to the attacks of 2011, which caused the concentration in one sprawling agency of federal police power without sufficient restraints against abuse. The consequences of that are now apparent in the brutality meted out to citizens exercising their First Amendment rights by anonymous paramilitaries.  Citizens have been stripped of privacy rights in the name of fighting terror by the Patriot Act. They have no protection from arbitrary arrest and detention one hundred miles from either coast and both borders, a de facto suspension of habeas corpus that abrogates a civil right going back to Magna Carta (Article XXXIX).

To see this unchecked power wielded by a Chief Apprentice who has no loyalty to democratic rule of law, and whose motivation is primarily personal gain, is terrifying.  The attacks that precipitated this lurch towards authoritarianism occurred ten years ago, without corrective action being taken by a craven Congress. Only 'Mericans can save themselves and the remnants of republican government from the creeping fascism overtaking the nation.

credit: R. Margulies

"It must be my personality...."

US COVID DEATHS (est.):  221,500

COTW: The Other Shoe is Dropping

2nd quarter 2020

 

Update: New economic data released shows the largest annual contraction in GDP since WWII, 32.9%.  Unemployment filings increased for the second week in a row, with a 1.43 million people applying for benefits.  Congress is deadlocked by a delinquent party of naysayers in the Senate.  Some 20 million American’s qualified for extra federal unemployment benefit set to expire on Friday; those payments now account for 15% of the entire nation’s wages.  If  Repugnants fail to act, responsibility for Depression 2.0 can be placed directly in their tiny, money grubbing hands.

{27.07.20} Since you are living in the worse economic downturn since the Great One, you might expect the FIRE economy to show signs of collapse.  This chart is one red flag:

The much followed Case-Schiller housing market index has turned negative for the first time in nine years.  Strong demand in the first quarter of 2020 coupled with a tight supply have protected home prices from the disastrous economic effects of the pandemic, so far.  As the crisis deepens and demand becomes increasingly slack, house prices will fall going into 2021. The National Home Price Index is expected to be down 6.6% by May, 2021. (light blue line)

In the chart above the HPI includes distressed sales, which the CS Index (columns) does not. It is interesting to note that in the previous economic crash of 2008-09, housing prices fell first; this time housing prices are a lagging indicator of the economic distress.  Right now, renters are on the edge of the cliff created by Repugnant denial of virus lethality and niggardly relief proposals, but what happens when their vaunted base starts loosing their homes to foreclosure or distressed sales? Making 'Merica Great Again is starting to look like a Hollywood disaster movie without sequel.  Fixing this looming collapse will take more than a mask and illegal arrests.  "It's yuge!":

US COVID DEATHS (est.): 218,600.

Progress for Tigers

credit: Getty Images

Forget the deeply dysfunctional 'Tiger King' who achieved his 15 minutes of undeserved fame by exploiting tigers in captivity.  The real success story is the number of tigers coming back in the wild.  New figures from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) show populations are increasing in a number of regions that remain tiger country.  Experts say the increases are remarkable.  In 2010 there were only an estimated 3,200 tigers living in the wild--exceeded by the number of captive animals living in the US.  Tiger range countries--India, Russia, China, Nepal and Bhutan have given tiger advocates like US Person hope for the future.  In India, which is home to three quarters of Earth's tigers, the population is now estimated between 2,600 and 3,350. In Bhutan's Royal Manas National Park only 10 tigers were alive in 2010; that figure is now 22 in 2019.  Neighbor Nepal has gone from 121 to 235. In Russia's far east, Amur tigers [photo] have increased by 15% in the past ten years.

The Year of the Tiger (2010), saw range countries pledge to double their tiger populations {21.01.12}. Increased protection efforts since then are paying off. Much remains to be done, however. Protection of their habitat and prey from human exploitation and disturbance are what tigers need to thrive.  Snares pose a severe threat to tiger survival. Recent analysis says that there may be 123 million snares threatening wildlife in protected areas of Southeast Asia.  A spokesperson for WWF says humans can help tigers by making sure the products they buy are not produced from illegal logging which destroys tiger habitat.  Tigers need a "team effort" from local communities, consumers and governments to insure their survival in the wild.

credit: WWF

'Toontime: The Chief Distraction

credit: M. Wuerker, Poltico

Instead of naming his ghost-written book, The Art of the Deal, the Apprentice in Office should have titled it, The Art of Distraction. A master of this dark art, before our eyes he is using the social unrest since George Floyd could not breath under the boot of police brutality as a means to distract from the real issues with spine-tingling appeals for "LAW AND ORDER." The Trumpen Sturmabteilung about to be deployed nationwide after their violent debut in Portland, OR has nothing to do with law and order and everything to do with his reelection in the middle of a pandemic he has demonstrably failed to curtail because according to him, "It will just disappear." The only thing disappearing is the nation's economy beyond the FIRE sector.

The buck is passed here....

COVID-19 DEATHS (EST.): 213,500*

credit: M. Wuerker, Politco

"The land is mine and you are but aliens who have become my tenants.

Therefore, in every part of the country that you shall occupy,
 you must permit the land to be redeemed"....This fiftieth year you shall make 
sacred by proclaiming liberty in the land for all inhabitants....  Leviticus 25:23-24, 25

*Dr. Vin Gupta of the University of Washington health metrics department predicts that COVID-19 deaths will hit 224,00 by year's end.

Polar Bears Extinct by End of Century

A new study published in Nature, has concluded that unless humans alter the current rate of global warming, polar bears could become extinct in the wild by 2100.  The Arctic regions of the globe have experienced unprecedented warm and sea ice melting in the last few decades.  Sea ice covering the Arctic ocean has shrunk to historic lows.  Siberian temperatures have hit 100℉ recently, an unprecedented record.  Polar bears are directly affected by this pervasive climate change since they use sea ice to hunt for their primary food source, seals, during the winter.  In summer, they retreat to land and mostly fast living off stored fat, but prolonged periods of fasting leads to deterioration of the their body and the inability to breed. Twenty-six thousand polar bears (Ursus maritimus) currently survive in 19 subpopulations spread across four polar regions. Bears living in the southern most ranges will be affected first. Under the worst case scenario with little mitigation of present emissions, only bears living in the northernmost Queen Elizabeth islands of Canada may survive

credit: K. Miller, Polar Bears Int'l.

“It’s been clear for some time that polar bears are going to suffer under climate change,” said Péter Molnár, lead author. Their research shows that as early as 2040 bears could experience reproductive failure. By 2080 bears in Russia and Alaska will also be in serious trouble,  In Alaska's Northern Beaufort Sea, researchers have already observed a decline of 25-50% during low ice periods, and in western Hudson Bay the population has declined by 30% since 1987. The only way these magnificent creatures can be saved is by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Even if humans reduce their emissions tomorrow, it will take 25 to 30 years for sea ice coverage to stabilize due to accumulated carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

So what can be done until man perhaps gets his act together and stops destroying the planet?   US Person makes a suggestion that is bound to be considered radical. So be it--the situation is extreme and calls for bold action.  The problem reduces to this unescapable fact: polar bears cannot find enough food in the man-altered Arctic environment. Man has a moral obligation in these dire straits to help the bear survive by providing food.  Feeding the largest and strongest land carnivore on Earth seems nonsensical when starving bears pose a potential threat to human settlement.

However, local people have been successfully living with the bear for millennium, and are well able to provide excess food for starving bears to scavenge as a last resort.  Wildlife officials in the range states should enlist the aid of indigenous peoples, perhaps by allowing special hunts for whale or walrus, to provide carcasses that can be located at distance from settlements.  This method of conservation, called supplemental feeding, has been used before to conserve species such as elk.  Allowing whole polar bear populations to simply starve to death seems unnecessarily cruel, even for humans.  Without our help, they, "will just disappear."

COTW: Pick Your Plague

Sick and tired of pandemic news?  US Person offers this graphic from Visual Capitalist of another epidemic plaguing 'Merica, this one almost entirely self-inflicted:

As the Apprentice-in-Chief likes to constantly point out, the US is #1.  Among nations the US has the highest proportion of drug-related deaths in the world, per capita.  Opioid deaths account for seventy per cent of overdose deaths in the US.  The opiod epidemic is marked by a progression of more powerful drugs hitting the streets.  Beginning with prescription and natural opioids and methadone [yellow], these were followed by an increase in heroine use [orange], then the even more powerful synthetic opiods, fentanyl and tramadol. [red]  Only 1-2 mg of fentanyl is a fatal dose.  Now a drug at street level, called carfentanil, originally developed as a veterinary tranquilizer, is 100x more potent than fentanyl.  The dose for a adult African elephant is listed as 13mg, about the size of a dime.  This cheap, dangerous drug is used by dealers to cut heroin. Can 'Merica afford a reality-TV president? NOT.

US COVID-19 DEATHS (EST.): 210,000

An Origin Theory for SARS-CoV-2

Related: A vaccine being developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University has demonstrated immune responses in early stage human trials. The response was enhanced with two doses of the vaccine about a month apart wtih only minor side effects. The level of immune response is similar to that experienced by convalescing COVID-19 patients. The drug, AZD 1222, is a leading candidate for deployment among more than 150 candidate vaccine being developed around the world. Oxford developed the drug and licensed it to AstraZeneca, which has agree to manufacture and distribute 2 billion doses without profiting from it during the pandemic.

{20.07.20} A lot of speculation has swirled around a virology lab in Wuhan, China as ground zero for the outbreak of a novel corona virus that is currently laying waste to mankind around the world.  Of course it is tragically obvious that this science based speculation has been seized upon and warped by political opportunists and propagandists at the highest level of government.  So you have catchy epithets like 'China flu', 'Kung flu' and 'Wuhan wobblies' floating around the airwaves.

Two authors at Counterpoint propose a theory for the genesis of the novel corona virus.  Based on the translation of a Chinese doctor's master thesis, the article reveals the possible genetic origin of SARS-CoV-2. They do not think that the virus was developed as a bio-weapon, but do see a role for viral research in the virus' emergence. They argue their theory explains several puzzling genetic features of the virus such as the affinity of its spike proteins for the human chemical receptor, ACE2.  This receptor is found in a number of human cell types from the brain to the intestines, accounting for the ability of the novel virus to impair multiple human organs.

Wuhan became the world's leading research center for bat corona viruses.  There are two labs in the city and both have collected and researched these viruses in the past.  The lab run by Zheng-li Shi, Wuhan Institute of Virology, collected two viral sequences that are the presumptive ancestors of SARS-CoV-2 from a mine in 2012-13.  Six miners contracted a mysterious respiratory illness; three died in 2013.  They are described in the master's thesis by a doctor who supervised their treatment.  The authors' origin theory is based on these case histories. They also point to what they consider to be the 'questionable' safety record of the Wuhan Institute, now a level four facility.  Notably, obtaining level four containment was only begun in 2013 and delayed until 2018.

Virologists generally accept that the nearest relatives of the SARS-CoV-2 virus are found in bats.  Presumably, SARS-CoV-2 evolved from an ancestral bat virus.  The question is what was the route taken by the virus from the wild to humans?  A persuasive study reported in Nature Medicine outlined a path from bats in nature to humans, a "zoonotic" transfer via pangolins.  Anderson et al speculate that a viral evolution adopted by SARS-CoV-2 occurred in pangolins from Malaysia and illegally imported in Guangdong province.  Wuhan in Hubei province is one thousand kilometers from Guangdong.  Anderson discounts the involvement of a lab in the evolution of the novel corona virus, such as "passaging", a process whereby a live virus is exposed to cells for which it is not adapted to speed up virus evolution.

According to the Counterpunch article written by a virologist and a geneticist, there has been a history of lab accidents, disease outbreaks, and even pandemics resulting from accidents with viruses, including SARS.  There have been six documented escapes of SARS from labs, not all in China, with some leading to fatalities.  H1N1 in 1977 and Venezuelan Equine Encephalitis are both thought to be caused by lab outbreaks.  In fact H1N1 may have escaped again in 2009 when a vaccine was improperly activated by its maker. Latham and Wilson say that new research undermines the zoonosis origin theory.  The Chinese CDC ruled out the Wuhan "wet market" as the source of the outbreak. Pangolins apparently are not a natural reservoir of corona virus, and bat kidney or lung cells do not replicate SARS-CoV-2. The two virus sequences retrieved from the Mojiang mine closely resemble sequences in the novel corona virus by 98.6 and 96.2% respectively.  There is evidence that researchers from the Wuhan Institute made four trips to the mine between August 2012 and July 2013 to collect samples, while some of the miners were still hospitalized by a "severe pneumonia caused by unknown viruses."

credit: Nature

Description of the miners' treatment in Yunnan province points to a COVID-19 outbreak, then an unknown disease. Many symptoms like the ones in COVID-19 cases were treated, including severe respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), thrombosis, high fever, and dry coughs. Treatments included ventilation, steroids, blood thinners, and antivirals.The doctors concluded that the source of the strange infections was Rhinolophus sinicus, the Chinese horseshoe bat. [photo] The miners apparently contracted a coronavirus, but not SARS-CoV-2 itself. The miners did not die of a fugal infection such as histoplasmosis, as claimed by Zheng-li Shi in a 2020 interview with Scientific American. Shi and his colleagues were researching bat betacorona viruses because they are considered to be most dangerous, having pandemic potential. SARS and MERS are both betacorona types.  Finding betacorona viruses in a mine loaded with various bats in which miners were killed by a SARS infection was in perfect alignment with their expectations.

It is known that virus samples were taken from the miners and sent to Kumming University Hospital for their research. Connecting all the data points, the authors propose that the outbreak leading to a pandemic was either a research accident, or caused by passaging in the lab which speeded up the evolution of the collected bat virus into the novel, human killing version now know as SAR-CoV-2.  The bat betacorona virus sequence RaTG13, although closely related in structure is still 1200 nucleotides different, which according to one prominent evolutionary biologist, represents 20-50 years of natural evolution.  Passaging in the lab could have speeded this process up considerably. This theory is interesting because it does explain many of the unique features of the virus, supported by documented medical evidence.  One of the unique features of SARS CoV-2 that allows it to infect humans is the presence of a chemical structure known as a furin site, not present in other closely related corona viruses.  The authors posit that high selection pressure in the miners' lungs worked to ensure that the virus became highly adapted to human hosts.

This Mojiang miners hypothesis would also explain the lack of adaptive evolution in the virus genome since the pandemic began.  It is well established that viruses which jump species undergo accelerated evolutionary change in the new host; this accelerated adaptation was observed in both SARS and MERS, but has not been observed in SARS-CoV-2, despite infecting many more individuals. Latham and Wilson think, based on the translated documentation, that one of the miners (probably the one who had his thymus removed for examination) was "patient zero".  Regrettably, the Wuhan researchers could have anticipated they were dealing with deadly virus samples already highly adapted to human hosts.  A small safety error could have directly led to 2019-nCoV (official designation), escape into the human population in 2019.

This potential human alteration in viral evolution through research at Wuhan is controversial and many journalists refuse to pursue this line of inquiry since it might be considered "political", conspiracy theory, or tainted by intelligence misinformation.  Certainly the current US regime is using possible Chinese lab involvement in its relentless propaganda attempting to divert its significant role in the skyrocketing infection rate. More investigation into this genetic detective story is waranted.  The lab escape hypothesis can only be verified by examining the lab notebooks and safety records of relevant researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, an event unlikely if the Wuhan lab is conducting classified research of national importance.

The Chimpmunk Invasion

First it was squirrels in 2018 {26.10.18}, now it is the turn of chipmunks to drive people nuts in leafy New England.  Chipmunks are gathering nuts, and a lot of them.  A bumper crop of seeds and nuts has produced a population boom among Tamias striatus.  Ordinarily the little rodents are ignored by human gardeners when their numbers are low.  In large numbers, they can be destructive, borrowing into lawns, gardens, and even homes.  They have plenty of forage to choose from.  Excess acorns and hazelnuts litter the ground instead of being stashed away in underground storage for winter by the frenetic creatures. Humans should not be too concerned, as chipmunks are controlled by their many predators: owls, hawks, snakes, foxes and raccoons.  They are all part of Nature's food chain, best left alone.  Even if a chipmunk avoids consumption, their natural lives are short, only three years.  Enjoy watching the cute creatures scampering among the leaves and grasses, without going nuts or reaching for the exterminator. It's beautiful and huge at the same time!

'Toontime: Wrap Yourself in a Mask, NOT a Flag!

Wackdoodle sez: Waive them Stars and Bars, too! 
credit John Cole, Scranton Times-Tribune

The Antichrist in Office has committed more daily outrage this week: allowing his daughter to illegally endorse Goya beans; lying about more white people dying of cops; crippling the nation's Magna Carta of environmental protection laws, signed by former worst president, Richard Nixon; commuting the sentence of his co-conspirator, Roger Stone; resuming judicial murder by cruel injection; publicly denigrating the nation's leading infectious disease expert; and demanding that children risk 'China Flu' infection or worse in classrooms this fall. The list goes on, but US Person refuses to clutter his mind with the nonstop nonsense. What can you do when his own niece says he is "unfit for office", but forty percent of 'Mericans think he is the best thing since canned beer? Excuse me, but US Person does not want to live in a police state; the new Reich has arrived in Portland, Oregon.

BC Idonwanna sez: Si es Trump, tiene que ser estúpido

credit: Steve Sack, Star Tribune

It's huge!....Yes:

US COVID DEATH TOLL (EST.): 206,200

Yemen's Sinking Tanker Will Be Ecological Disaster

Off the coast of war devastated Yemen, is the decaying oil tanker, FSO Safer.  The tanker's name betrays the truth: it is loaded with more than a million barrels of crude oil waiting to spill into the Red Sea.  The tanker has been anchored off the port of Hudaydah and has not undergone any maintenance in five years since the civil war began.  Of course the government and rebels both claim the oil, which has devalued in price but is expected to be worth $40 million.  Houthi rebels finally agreed on Sunday to allow UN inspectors on board the vessel after water entered the engine room increasing the chances the derelict would sink or explode.  Fortunately, disaster was averted and a temporary fix applied.  The UN should not wait for the Houth's to give permission to prevent an ecological disaster.

An oil spill of this magnitude would destroy the regional ecology of the sea as well as displace the livelyhoods of 126,000 people working in the fishing industry.  The UN estimates it will take thirty years for fish and coral species to recover from the spill.  The UN has called on the Houthi's to allow removal of the oil.  Houthi's insist they should be allowed to sell the oil and not share the proceeds with the government they are seeking to overthrow.  So far the war has killed over 100,000 Yemenis in the world's worst humanitarian crisis.  Twenty-four million people require some form of assistance or protection, and some 2 million children are severely malnourished.  The United States has given military aid to the Yemen government via their Saudi and UAE clients.  Air strikes by the Saudi Air Force have been responsible for the deaths of 6,872 non-combatants.

Llamas Beat Hydroxchloroquine

Belgian llamas helping fight the virus; credit T. Coppens

What do llamas do well besides pack stuff for humans? They make simple antibodies that can be stored, replicated and engineered in the laboratory. Llama antibodies are responsible for the development of an encouraging corona virus therapy.  These are called "nanobodies", and are a quarter the size of human antibodies.  Very stable, they can be introduced directly into the lungs via an inhaler. University of Texas researchers in collaboration with Belgium's Ghent University’s Vlaams Institute for Biotechnology have successfully engineered nanobodies to attach to the SARS CoV-2 virus and prevent it from entering a human cell.  Once inside the cell the virus transforms to merge with its host, allowing it replicate itself, while destroying the cell in the process. The llama nanobodies bind to spike proteins that form the virus' distinctive corona.

This is not the first time that llamas (llama glama), New World relatives of the camel, have come to the rescue of humans fighting disease. The small size of their antibodies have attracted researchers attempting to develop antibody treatments for the flu. There are biotechnology companies in Europe entirely focused on new treatments developed from llama antibodies. Llamas produce four antibodies by their immune response to flu virus that bestow protection from a wide range of flu viruses. These four nanobodies were connected and improved through bio-engineering resulting in a four-in-one antibody effective against a number of flu viruses including avian flu. Researchers were able to deliver the created antibody using a nasal mist that is effective in temporarily immunizing mice.

After injecting virus' spike proteins into a llama's bloodstream causing an immune response, the COVID-19 researchers harvested nanobodies with the correct proteins in place.  Of the twelve nanobodies compatible to SARS and MERS viruses, one, SARS VHH-72, bound to the novel corona virus.  It did not attach for a long period, making it unlikely to prevent SARS CoV-2 from entering a cell. So the scientists modified it by genetically fusing two nanobodies together causing it to stick to the virus more tenaciously.  A researcher pronounced the results to be the first known antibody to neutralize SARS CoV-2.  More work needs to be done on llama antibodies before testing them in humans.  The antibody therapy developed could be used to treat patients already infected with the novel corona virus or at high risk of becoming infected.  Thank you, llamas.

Germany Goes Green

Germany is the first major nation to renounce coal burning as an energy source.  The Bundestag approved a plan on July 2nd to phase out coal by 2038.  The country has already decided to phase out nuclear generating plants by 2022, putting it far ahead of its European sister states, Britain and France, in commitment to clean, renewable energy generation.  The government plans to spend $45 billion helping localities make the strategic conversion.  Greenpeace, the international environmental organization, is critical of the legislation saying it will not reduce carbon dioxide emissions fast enough to meet the Paris Climate accord targets.  However, Germany has taken a giant step forward in reducing global warming emissions by at least planning a phase-out before the middle of the century, which no other country has done.  Germany burns the most lignite coal of any country according to director Martin Kaiser.

Germany closed its last anthracite coal mine in 2018, but continues to import anthracite and burn its own lignite, a brownish coal abundant in Germany, but which produces less energy when burned.  The government said regular environmental reviews may allow the end date to be moved forward.  The environment minister noted that eight of the most polluting coal plants will be closed by 2022.  The nation's miners union supports the historic switch to renewables which now account for 55.7% of Germany's net public power supply.  Green Kudos to Germany!

COTW: Blast From the Past

Latest:  A fifteen year old boy died of bubonic plague in Mongolia, officials said Tuesday.  He lived in remote Gobi-Altai province and contracted the disease after hunting and eating a marmot, a species of rodent.  Five provinces were placed under a six day quarantine and the first 15 people the boy came in contact with were treated with antibiotics.  Earlier this month two other cases of plague were found in Khovd province, but no apparent spread of the disease was detected after 140 people were tested.  A man in the Chinese region of Inner Mongolia also died of the disease this month [below]. Russia has taken the precaution of testing rodents in Burytia, eastern Siberia, for plague.  Despite warnings to avoid contact with marmots, about one person per year dies of plague in Mongolia.  Consuming marmot organs are thought to bring beneficial health effects.  NOT!

{08.07.20} People ask US Person, will it be back to normal after the pandemic?  US usuallyresponds by asking, what do you mean by 'normal'.  Certainly altered social behavior, including economic behavior, will be with us until an effective vaccine is developed which will take at least until next year.  Fortunately SARS CoV-2 is not as lethal as Ebola virus or even Yersinia pestis, which kills between 30-60% of its victims if left untreated by antibiotics. [photo below]  This bacteria causes the dreaded black death, or bubonic plague, the most common form of the disease.  Covid-19 may be with us for some time to come, as there are predictions that it could become seasonally persistent like the flu.  Science has more to learn about the novel virus and its long term effects on humans.  The virus is mutating, too, presumably to become more adapted to its human hosts.

Yes, the plague is still with us after all these years,  existing in the southwest United States to date. The last plague epidemic occurred in China and India in the 19th century, killing about 12 million people.  A recent case of a man in Inner Mongolia contracting the disease, probably from marmots consumed as food, has made the news. The WHO says the case is isolated and being well managed, but still, bubonic plague in the 21st century? Who would have figured?  Look--this chart below shows that a few people still die of bubonic plague in the United States:

The states of California, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona form the "plague line" in the US.  The disease persists in these states because of an animal reservoir in which the bacteria can survive. Highly social prairie dogs are  preferred hosts, but the pathogen is also carried by other species, such as black-footed ferrets [photo below]. Canadian lynx are also known carriers.  Usually the bacteria is transferred to humans by infected flea bites.

The existence of this animal reservoir in Nature makes the disease almost impossible to eradicate. The only human disease eradicated by science, smallpox, does not exist in animals.  Polio has almost been exterminated, but still hangs on in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and has returned to Syria since the ravages of its civil war. There are efforts to immunize possible animal carriers in areas where interaction with humans could be prevalent, such as parks. An oral vaccine has been developed to treat prairie dogs and ferrets. Prairie dogs seem to prefer peanut butter balls as bait, research shows.

Research on plague is "vibrant" with scientists researching ways to better detect the disease, and find a human vaccine to prevent it. Effective anti-bacterial drugs exist to treat bubonic plague, which is curable if caught in time. The reason for the scientific interest in a plague from the past is that it is classified as a category A biological weapon.

US COVID-19 deaths (est.): 187,675.*


*Yale University estimates that the actual death toll in the US is 28% higher than official reporting. This figure was reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) on Wednesday.  The most accurate way to count the number of dead from the pandemic is to calculate the number of "excess deaths" over a similar period of time, pre-pandemic.  A team led by a Yale epidemiologist, Daniel Weinberger, counted the number of deaths in the US between March and May using state death records compared to a base line of recorded deaths from January 2015 to and January 2020.  This calculation provided expected deaths to which the actual figures were compared.  Forty-one states and DC all had a higher number of deaths than expected. Weinberger and his colleagues wrote, “Monitoring excess mortality provides a key tool in evaluating the effects of an ongoing pandemic.”

COTW: Redrawing Oklahoma

US Person must be excused for not posting about the historic McGirt case midst his preoccupation with the struggle against the most corrupt American government in its 240-odd year history McGirt v Oklahoma is not historic for the fact that the decision will result in the federal retrial of Jimmy McGirt, an enrolled Creek Indian and convicted child rapist serving 500 years in a state penitentiary; but the fact that it hands legal jurisdiction over nearly half of the state, [map] including the city of Tulsa, back to its original owners, removed Native Americans. The decision by a 5-4 majority of the Supreme Court, including a conservative justice appointed by the Antichrist in Office, is shattering in its significance.

McGirt's attorneys raised the argument that an 1866 treaty with the Muskogee Creek nation prevented the state of Oklahoma for trying McGirt for his crimes in state court since it lacked jurisdiction over the Muscogee reservation.  Indian tribes have the authority to try most crimes in their own courts, except for certain felonies--manslaughter, murder and kidnapping--which must be tried in federal court.  This recognition of an aspect of sovereignty is a rare thing, since Congress signed 370 treaties with native peoples over the years, and has broken almost every one--resulting a lot of work for Indian attorneys. Neil Gorsuch writing for the majority recognized the historic gravity of the decision.  Nevertheless, the Court decided that the 1866 treaty means exactly what it says, should be enforced against the state of Oklahoma, and the land remain an Indian reservation.  He wrote, “On the far end of the Trail of Tears was a promise. Today we are asked whether the land these treaties promised remains an Indian reservation for purposes of federal criminal law. Because Congress has not said otherwise, we hold the government to its word."

Breathtaking words during the tenure of an authoritarian regime steeped in the ideology of authoritarianism. Using a conservative textual approach in his legal analysis, Gorsuch arrived at a result certainly unappreciated by the deep red state of Oklahoma.  Tribal leaders have hailed the result as a recognition of native sovereignty long overdue and deeply abused by latter-day governments.  The less laudatory effect of McGirt means the retrial in federal court of about 200 Native Americans currently serving time for their serious federal crimes. Another effect: state taxes may not be paid by Indians residing on reservation lands.  So there needs to be renegotiation, adjustment, and law making between the state and the affected nations--Muscogees, Cherokees, Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Seminoles. Justice Gorsuch noted Congress can make necessary statutory clarifications, if needed. That is a small price to pay for America to finally live up to the promises it made to the first people of this land.

'Toontime: The Unitary Douche Is Dead

credit: Stantis
BC Idonwanna sez: Wear mask on way out!

The Supremes handed Total two slaps in the face this week.  The high court reaffirmed that even POTUS has to obey the law and respond to duly issued subpoenas in criminal cases and congressional oversight investigations.  There is little chance that the public will see his tax returns before the election in November, as both Trump v. Vance (Manhattan DA criminal investigation) and US v. Mazars (congressional oversight) are remanded to lower courts for additional litigation that will almost certainly take public knowledge beyond Election Day.  But knocking dead the absurd argument of absolute presidential immunity from legal process is a positive outcome, reaffirming previous subpoena cases involving sitting US presidents (Nixon, Clinton).  Even Douche's two appointees voted against this legal canard.  He knows that once he leaves the Room without Corners, he will not have consiglieri Bill Barr to protect him from federal prosecution for his financial crimes.

Was it Joseph De Maistre who said the nation would get the leaders we deserve? Thanks to his niece, Mary Trump, we now have an accurate picture of the dysfunctional occupant of the Very White House: a tragically flawed human being who's fragile ego depends on constant, deceitful self-aggrandizement and slavish support from delusional, co-dependent fans and associates.  Equally tragic for the nation is that this gradual psychic disintegration plays out in the most powerful public office of the land during a global pandemic.  But then the denouement of such a long personal history of bullying, cheating*, lying, and fraudulent behavior had to be somewhat spectacularly oversized, just like the misanthrope at the center. It is up to the American people to see that the Apprentice experience accountability he has strenuously avoided his entire life, but so richly deserves.

Will the real Donald please take a test?....

US COVID-19 deaths (est.): 201,881. Number of golf trips in office: 276.

*Joe Shapiro, the real "stable genius" and former Disney executive who took Douche's SAT so he could enter prestigious Wharton Business School is dead, at the age of 52, and dead men tell no tales.  But now that Mary Trump has revealed to the world her uncle cheated on the college entrance exam, according to the Daily Pennsylvanian he is in danger of losing his degree.  After a college admission scandal rocked the country in 2019, the University of Pennsylvania passed a new rule: it would revoke the degree of any graduate found to have given false information on an admission application, cheated on an exam or tampered with their records.  According to the paper, "an investigation can be launched if information is found that confirms or suggests wrongdoing in the process of obtaining the degree. Graduates will have the option to come to an agreement to possibly voluntarily give up the degree, or a formal investigation and hearing will be launched."  No comment from the regime.  For what it is worth, the widow of Joe Shapiro defends him (and Trump) against the allegation of cheating on the SAT.

Yellowstone Grizzlies Regain Legal Protection

courtesy: National Park Service

In a big win for Yellowstone's grizzlies, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the great bears should remain in the Endangered Species Act's threatened category.  De-listing the bears, which would have exposed them to trophy hunting outside park boundaries, was proposed by the regime but blocked by a federal District Court.  In affirming the lower court, the circuit judges recognized that the Fish & Wildlife Service succumbed to political pressure while ignoring the scientific evidence that the Yellowstone population is too small and isolated to insure its long term survival while exposed to hunting in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming.

The Yellowstone population of grizzlies has not grown in the past twenty years, but it is expanding its range in response to the lack of food.  Whitebark pine trees and cutthroat trout populations are decimated.  The bears are moving out of their core habitat in the national park to find more suitable habitat in their historic range.  This apparent increase in the number of bears has prompted hunting interests to pressure the pro-exploitation regime in Washington to propose de-listing in 2017.  The federal district court found the proposed rule change arbitrary and capricious in 2018 after a plaintiff group of conservation organizations and native organizations sued to keep the bears protected.  They were opposed, predictably, by the National Rife Association and the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation. 

The science facts on the ground are that until the Rocky Mountain grizzly is restore to one connected, trans-border population its survival in the wild is threatened. About five thousand grizzlies live in the contiguous United States. Five isolated islands of population, like the one that lives in the Yellowstone, leads to inbreeding making the species susceptible to extinction by the forces of natural selection.

Dakota Access Pipe Closed Down

Little Thunder rocks out in response to good news

A major victory for the Standing Rock and Cheyenne River Sioux Tribes in the battle against the Dakota Access Pipeline occurred today when a federal judge ordered the pipeline closed and emptied of oil by August 5th, while federal regulators perform an environmental review of the project.  The pipeline carries crude oil from North Dakota's Bakken shale field to a terminal in Illinois.  The  tribes have opposed the project alleging it represents a threat to the clean water in Lake Oahe, a reservoir on the Missouri River near their reservation.  The litigation has continued for four years.

As part of its comprehensive effort to reverse Obama-era environmental regulation, the Antichrist signed an order shortly after taking office overturning the denial of necessary permits from the Army Corps of Engineers.  The pipeline was completed and operating within months.  The federal District Court for the District of Columbia previously found that the Corps failed to prepare a required environmental impact statement (EIS) for the pipeline crossing under Lake Oahe.  Today's decision by Judge Boasberg concluded that the pipeline should not operate while the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) requirements are met.  The Court noted that it was not requiring removal of the completed pipeline, but only "vacatur" of operation during the approximately 3.6 years it usually takes for the Corps to complete an EIS. Regulatory delay is one of the reasons the regime is so intent on curtailing NEPA reviews.

This decision comes just a day after two energy companies cancelled the Atlantic Coast pipeline, which was proposed to carry fracked gas through mid-Atlantic states for six hundred miles. The route would have cut through two national forests, under the Appalachian Trail, and would have crossed indigenous land. The former corporate lobbyist EPA head blamed a, "well-funded funded obstructionist environmental lobby" for cancelling the project. The decision to cancel came after a win in the Supreme Court removing a regulatory hurdle for the $8 billion pipeline. Green Kudos! to the obstructionists from US Person, aka 'Red Dwarf".

Electoral College Goes to Highest Court

Update: The Supremes handed the "Originalists" a defeat by a score of 8 to 0, saying the states have the constitutional authority to bind their electors. The lopsided vote is an indication of the Trumpian argument's merits in favor of elector independence. Over to you, Wilson.

{17.6.20}The Supremes have agreed to take up the case of the "faithless elector" from Colorado, Michael Baca, who decided to exercise what he sees as his prerogative to vote for a presidential candidate who did not win his state's popular vote. The case is fundamental to the future of democracy in the Republic. It will determine if electors are simply functionaries of the popular will, or a political elite that actually decides who is to be El Presidente.   Baca has some historical precedent on his side of the argument. The Electoral College was a late compromise by the founders who could not reach agreement on whether Congress or the states should decide a presidential election.  At least one founder thought the compromise to be "excellent", if not perfect.  In his distinctly aristocratic view, the College would be a dignified forum of informed and dispassionate decision makers, unswayed by the "low arts" of popularity to which the masses were vulnerable.

Supporters of the independence of electors are adherents of "originalism", which interprets the Constitution according to the original intent of the drafters, according to originalists. If that sounds circular, it is. The problem with this argument is that the founders also wanted to let states decide how to pick their electors.  Colorado opted for popular sovereignty, and passed a law requiring its electors to follow the results of the popular vote.  Mr. Baca violated that state law and was replaced. Adherents of "living constitutionalism" interpret the Constitution in the context of modern conditions not prevailing in the late 18th century.  Certainly, no one can plausibly argue that modern voters immersed in almost instantaneous information are less politically sophisticated than their 18th century antecedents. Consequently, states should be allowed to legally bind their electors to the popular vote result, if they so desire.

The real solution to our anachronistic and deeply skewed system of electing a president is to get rid of it.  The current indirect system has caused two recent elections to be inconsistent with popular sovereignty--and the negative impact of these anomalies have been lamentably experienced.   More unpopular results can be expected as national political polarization produces close Electoral College vote results, in which a few faithless electors like Baca could be the difference.

Who is this man, and why is he not a democrat?

'Toontime: Make Trump Great

credit: Jimmy Margulies

In the three and a half years of the Antichrist in Office, this latest scandal has to be the most despicable.  It proves that the so-called commander-in-chief considers his troops to be expendable, at least when his political survival is concerned.  There are only two plausible explanations for why he did nothing after being briefed about the GRU plot--some of the same people behind the 2016 election interference--to pay bounties on the lives of GIs fighting in Afghanistan: 1. He ignored, or failed to read his own intelligence on the matter, an inexcusable dereliction of duty; or 2) he did nothing to appease his controller in the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin, a corrupt malfeasance in office.  US Person thinks the latter to be the case based on what MI-6 spy Christopher Steele reported in his now infamous dossier.  Steele also wrote in secret testimony to MPs of, "the Kremlin’s likely hold over President Trump and his family/administration and indications of Russian interference in and clandestine funding of the Brexit referendum.”  Steele complained that the conservative government ignored his information in order to maintain cordial relations with the incoming US president.

credit: John Darkow, Columbia Missourian

The only unanswered question at this point is what exactly is the nature of the kompromat in possession of the Russian president for life.  As always, the squirrely 'Merican Antichrist is willing to live or let die depending on which benefits him the most.

No workingman is given employment

 that he may provide for himself and his family. 

It is only on condition that a profit can be extracted from his labor...
I have said again and again in this system there 
is nothing quite so cheap as human flesh and blood.

--Eugene Debs, Independence Day Address, 1901  

Look at my powerful hands...you are getting bored now....Vote for me!

Hundreds of Elephants Die in Botswana

Hundreds of elephant carcasses have been spotted in the Okavango Delta, representing a unprecedented mass dying and conservation disaster.  Botswana has become a last refuge for the African elephant that is under extreme pressure of extinction in the wild.  The government was alerted to the tragedy in early May after conservationists saw 169 dead elephants in a three hour flight over the Delta.  Later, more than 350 elephant carcasses were counted.  Botswana authorities ruled out poaching since ivory tusks had not been removed.  Drought is not a factor at this time, so the reason for the mass deaths remain a mystery for now.  Samples have been taken and sent to labs for analysis.  Results are expected in a few weeks.

BBC News

Botswana has been a elephant success story with the largest remaining population of the large mammals on the continent. 130,451 is the estimate given by the Great Elephant Census. Elephants are fleeing into Botswana to escape poachers and loss of habitat in neighboring countries.  Coexistence with humans in Botswana is not entirely peaceful, however. Many are killed by locals due to competition for food; poison is sometimes used to eliminate competitors.  The government is very sensitive to any perception that it is protecting elephants over human inhabitants.   Anthrax, which lives in the soil and infects livestock, is a possible natural cause. Evidence at the scene indicates something is affecting the elephants' neurological system--falling on their faces, and walking in circles before they die--consistent with hoof and mouth disease, but also with poisoning.  A definitive answer for causation is needed since whatever is killing Botswana's elephants could be a danger to humans.

US COVID-19 deaths (est.): 186,200