"Toontime: High on Their Supply

credit: S. Sack; BC Idonwanna sez: He feels much better, now!

Democrats ought to be wiping the floor with the radical party of sedition, but they are crippled by Judas legislators in their midst. Biden is loosing ground because the dithering Demos cannot govern. This situation requires drastic action--US Person asks pardon for a mutt giving advice to a sitting President--Biden should have private conversations with Senators Machin and Sinema to lay down an ultimatum: Either they support changing the filibuster rule or use reconciliation to pass his agenda for America. If they cannot bring themselves to support the rest of their party, they should leave it and let the next election decide who controls the Senate. In the current circumstances the body serves no one except office holders. House progressives are correct to insist that both pieces of legislation, the infrastructure bill and the social benefits bill, pass together. Without a guarantee from the treacherous holdouts, the progressives, whose caucus hold the balance of power in the House and represent the will of the people, will end up with less than half an already diminished pie.

The Willard Hotel Putsch

Update: The Select committee plans to subpoena John Eastman to testify about his participation in the J6 insurrection, according to the Washington Post. His scheme to overturn the election was presented to VP Mike Pence in the Oval Office on January 10 with Trump present. 

{26.10.21}The only useful questions that remain in the investigation of the J6 attempted coup are: why isn't there any criminal accountability for the bad actors uncovered so far?  Why is not the former guy being subpoenaed to testify about his participation in the planning and funding of a coup that nearly overthrew the duly elected government of the United States? Why isn't the timid Merrick Garland moving immediately to indict and try the co-conspirator Steven Bannon for contempt of Congress?  Why are the Democrats so feckless in the face of obvious insurrection? US Person is not the only one who wants to know! [photo credit: WaPo]

The investigation so far has found that coup planners met at DC's Willard Hotel [photo] in what was known among them as the "command center" where the rallies prior to counting the electoral votes on January 6th were planned. The hotel suite became the base of operations for Rudi Gulliani, Steve Bannon and John Eastman, among other die hards. Former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik billed the Trump campaign $55,295 for the hotel rooms. Kerik acted as an alleged fraud investigator for the conspirators.  (Roger Stone was a visitor to the "command center" but did not participate in the coup plotting). Two witnesses cooperating with the House Select Committee told the Rolling Stone protest organizers met with Repugnant Congress members on numerous occasions.  

According to press reporting, organizers in the first days of January were calling members of Congress from their Willard suite to encourage swing state legislators to convene special sessions to reassign electoral votes from Biden to Trump on the basis of  unsubstantiated claims of fraud. On January 2nd alone, Gulliani and Eastman spoke to 300 state legislators to convince them of alleged fraudulent voting. On January 5 dozens of lawmakers from Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin wrote to VP Pence asking that he delay certification of Biden’s victory for 10 days to permit ‘our respective bodies to fulfill, examine, and vote on certification or decertification of the election.’ Conspirators efforts were reinforced by Facebook posts from their rabid supporters. That company, in the interest of pursuing more profit, took down previous content limits established during the election period, resulting in a flood of hateful, violent posts and election misinformation. The plotters then pressured Vice President Pence to not count electoral votes from targeted swing states on January 6th in conformity with the scenario outlined by Eastman in his now infamous memo. Pence refused to participate in the conspiracy.

Eastman, the legal architect of the conspiracy, is a law professor, and former clerk for Justice Clarence Thomas. He has yet to be subpoenaed by the House Select Committee. When asked about his involvement in the coup attempt he told reporters, “To the extent I was there, those were attorney discussions. You don’t get any comment from me on those.”  His alleged legal advice was meretricious--a blatant misinterpretation of the Vice President's ministerial electoral function under the Constitution's Twelve Amendment.

So, who were the congressional co-conspirators? The list is familiar to those who follow Congress: Reps. Paul Gosar [p], Marjorie Taylor Greene, Andy Biggs [p], Lauren Boebert [p], Madison Cawthorn, Mo Brooks, and Louie Gohmert. The informants say there were "dozens" of planning meetings with these members or their staffs prior to January 6th. At one point Gosar promised the organizers blanket pardons from Herr Trumpillini to encourage them to go ahead with the Elipse protest. Greene, Boebert and Gosar spoke at he event that turned into a riot after the former guy appeared and told his armed supporters to march to the Capitol. When the insurrectionists broke into the Senate chamber, they headed directly to the Senate Parliamentarian's office and ransacked it looking for the hard copy of the Electoral College vote count. It strains credulity to think the average horned shaman would know where to find that office tucked away in the warrens of the Capitol. 

Line Up of Losers

Lookout Mountain Pack Destroyed

The state of Oregon has all but eliminated the Lookout Mountain wolf pack after it killed three more wolves from the air on October 20th.  That makes a total of eight members of the pack killed under lethal removal permits issued since July. All that remains of this pack is the alpha female and two of her juvenile offspring, which are unlikely to breed with her. The female is collared with a GPS device.  Once again state authorities have proven incapable of managing a recovering wolf population, so the resumption of federal protection under the Endangered Species Act is required. [OR-7; photo credit: OPB]

Earlier this month the Department of Fish and Wildlife issued another lethal control permit in Umatilla County to remove two wolves.  This permit expires on October 31st. The agency claims that its investigations of the area revealed no conditions on the private land which would attract wolves such as carcasses or sick animals.  It also says in its public reports that livestock owner in question took non-lethal steps to protect livestock before requesting a culling permit. Eight calves were victims of attacks, which  the agency labeled "chronic".  That determination allows lethal removal under its wolf management plan.  Unless the cattle are removed from the area, or depredations cease for an extended period of time, the Fivemile pack could end up like the former Lookout Mountain group.  This culturally induced persecution of an apex carnivore attempting to survive in a radically altered landscape by man has to end soon.  Federal action is needed nows; write Joe Biden and ask him to reinstate federal protection for the grey wolf before its too late.

'Toontime: Nobody Does It Better

This week PNG does its 'Toontime feature a little differently:

 

 US Person can think of one thing Trumpillini does not do better: coup d'états.

Gallium to the Rescue?

US Person does not really care if Joe Munchkin becomes an independent, other than the fact he would be less deceptive.*  The Democratic Caucus does not have his vote now when it needs it the most, so nothing would really change. Rewarding disloyalty seems to be peculiarity of the hide-bound Senate. 

Since it appears we will be stuck with combustion as a means of producing energy, means to burn fossil fuels while emitting less carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere is of paramount importance. Australia is a huge coal producer that is number one on the list of coal exporting countries. In 2020 the country exported $32.7 billion worth of coal. This industry is a major sector of the economy. Its conservative government has expressed continued support for coal extraction and burning. But Australian scientists think they have a solution to the dilemma.

Researchers have struggled to find an economically viable way to eliminate or reduce carbon dioxide gas from the combustion process. US Person wrote in a previous post {20.10.21}, sequestration and storage of carbon waste is expensive and the technology problematic. The kernel of the problem is the stability of the CO₂ molecule under normal conditions. Its decomposition temperature is 2000C and it is used in industry as an inert gas to blanket volatile reactions or products.

One way to activate the carbon dioxide molecule for reactive purposes is to expend energy to cause it to ionize. This is what researchers have done using sound waves to agitate carbon dioxide molecules that come in contact with the rare metal Gallium. Gallium is #31 in the Periodic Table, close to aluminum and zinc. Gallium has unusual properties. At STP it is a soft, silvery metal but it has a very low melting point. It will melt in your hand due to body heat being above its melting point of about 86F. It alloys easily with many metals.  Since it was first isolated in 1875 by French chemist Boisbaudran using spectroscopy, its use has been primarily as an alternative for mercury in themometrics and as a metal alloy. Today, its primary use is in the semiconductor industry. 

The researchers in Australia who published their results in the leading journal, Advanced Materials, have found a new and important use for the strange metal. Using a relatively small amount of electricity (230kWh per ton of CO₂ which costs about $28 in the US) and liquid gallium as a catalyst, they were able to obtain a 92% efficiency rate for converting CO₂ into oxygen and a carbon compound, graphene oxide, that has commercial value of about $800 a gram! Here is a basic schematic of what is going on in the reaction at the molecular level:

credit: Daily Kos

Droplets of Ga are suspended in a liquid solution capable of dissolving a lot of carbon dioxide. Silver fluoride salts are added and the mix agitated by sound waves.  Gallium forms tiny rod shaped crystals of silver-gallium spontaneously. When these rods came into contact with gallium nanoparticles, a charge differential is created across a thin layer of gallium oxide on the surface at the contact point (area A). Voilá, a tiny circuit is formed in which electrons flow to the end of the rod crystal where they come into contact with carbon dioxide to form negative CO₂ ions. These react with other carbon dioxide molecules to form oxygen and graphene oxide.  This process is sustainable and the catalysts--silver-gallium crystals and liquid gallium--remain intact.  

The researchers tested waste flue gas, which is not entirely carbon dioxide, and observed similar conversion results (it also contains sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides and particulates). Of course this process has yet to be proven at commercial scale, but development is continuing. But wait, you say, what about that gallium?  You said its rare, so is this just another environmental disaster waiting to happen?  Gallium does not appear as a free element in the Earth's crust.  It is a trace element of metallic ores of zinc and aluminum.  Gallium is produced as a by-product of bauxite mining primarily.  USGS estimates that about 1 million tons of the metal exists in known reserves of aluminum and zinc ores, In 2017 the world produced about 320 tons of refined gallium.  Not a lot, but perhaps a enough for use as a catalyst to reduce planet-wrecking carbon dioxide pollution.

* Mother Jones reports about Munchkin: "In the current electoral cycle, Manchin has received more in political donations from the oil and gas industry than any other senator, more than double the second largest recipient. He is also the No 1 beneficiary of donations from the coal mining sector, leads the way in money accepted from gas pipeline operators, and is sixth in the ranking of senatorial donations from electricity utilities."  If you ask US Person, he is an embarrassment. 

Carbon Capture--Not Yet!

Since Senator Munchkin Big Bucks is blocking the President's good faith effort to reduce carbon emissions, US Person takes a look at the so-called "clean coal" solution.  In short, NOT!  Coal is not clean because it emits tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere when burned to generate electricity.  About 72% of US carbon emissions come from coal burning power plants.  Burning one pound of carbon completely produces three and a half pounds of carbon dioxide according to EIA statistics. Coal advocates, like the heavily invested senator from West Virginia, are frantic to extend the life of coal burning regardless of the effects on global climate.  They often point to technologies they claim will allow the burning of coal with 90% capture of carbon emissions.

That claim is not yet a reality. In fact, the DOE cancelled funding for the nation's CO₂ sequester demonstration project near Maltoon, Illinois in 2015.  As the name implies the general idea is to chemically capture the gas by burning coal only in pure oxygen resulting in flue gas that is mostly carbon dioxide and water,  The waste gas is then pumped into a subsurface saline formation thirty miles away. Construction began in 2014.  Plant funding was subsequently cancelled because the DOE did not think the technology would be workable by funding deadlines contained in  the Recovery Act of 2009, and because the owners were short of necessary equity. The FutureGen 2.0 project, owned by a consortium of electric power and coal companies, was estimated to cost $1.65 billion with $1 billion coming from the federal government. It would have been the nation's first working power plant equipped with carbon sequestration and storage (CSS) technology.  Critics of carbon sequestration say the technology is not yet commercially viable.

Of the nearly $1 billion awarded to the project nearly $116.5 million was spent upgrading the fifty-year old power plant owned by Ameren Corp.  Another $86 million was invested in the underground storage site according to DOE records. The agency attempted to spin a positive outcome for its spending, saying the work demonstrated the deep saline formation was,  "a world-class location for geologic carbon sequestration."   Environmentalists say the clean coal concept is a myth perpetrated by coal interests to prolong the life of a dying industry. Friends of the Earth said in a statement. “After 10 years and millions of wasted dollars, the Department of Energy announced what we knew all along: Coal has no place in our energy future.” This battle is still going on in the context of Biden's reconciliation bill, which mandates clean power generation standards (CEPP) the coal industry and its handmaiden opposes.

A second, larger CCS plant was begun in Kemper County, Mississippi in 2010.  That plant was supposed to be in service by 2014, but became mired in cost overruns, project management problems and environmental controversies.  The plant was slated to cost $2.4 billion, but by June 2017 the cost had ballooned to $7.5 billion. After the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled in 2015 that the power company had to refund 186,000 ratepayers for rate increases related to the project, state law was changed to permit recovery of cost overruns at ratepayer expense. The Mississippi Public Service Commission recommended that the plant switch to natural gas to avoid more overruns. The owners converted the plant to burn natural gas in 2017.

Mississippi's then governor, Haley Barbour, pushed hard for reallocation of federal funds to the Kemper project after Florida decided it did not want anymore coal fired power plants. The Southern Company was a major client of the governor's lobbying firm according to federal records.

If sequestration sounds technically complex and politically fraught, it is. Most environmentalists say the correct solution is to move away from coal burning to cleaner power alternatives, not funding alleged fixes that produce marginal results.. Nevertheless in the category of 'if they won't go away, join them', a recent research development in Australia, a major coal producing country, has caught US Person's attention and in his opinion, deserves mention. Still an unproven laboratory concept, it may offer a simpler technological "fix" to burning dirty coal in a responsible way. Watch this space for details.

COTW: Too Late for the Klamath Salmon?

Four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River in southern Oregon and Northern California [chart above] are slated to be demolished by 2024. That might be good news for the Kalmath salmon, but it could also be too late to save them from extinction. The past several years of severe drought and over-appropriation by agriculturalists have wreaked havoc on fish populations. The huge Bootleg wildfire and recprd grasshopper infestation have also contributed to the sharp declines in fish numbers. Four local tribes depend on the salmon migrations and their culture is built around subsistence fishing. These catastrophes of biblical magnitude have caused tribal leaders and their scientific advisors to wonder whether the salmon will live to expierience removal of man-made obstacles blocking access to their historic spawning areas.

This year an entire class of juvenile fish, migrating to the Pacific, was wiped out by a warm-water parasite called Ceratonova shasta One testing sample found 97 of juveniles infected with the parasite. Of those infected only 63% are expected to survive. Until white settlers began degrading the ecosystem, the Kalmath was the Pacific Coast's third largest fishery. The species is a keystone to the region's fauna and flora. Salmon not only feed humans, but orcas, brown bears, river otters and bald eagles depend on their yearly heroics. Their cacasses provide nutrents to river bank trees that shade the waters and prevent erosion, which contributes to water quality. Loss of the salmon will cause a general decline and eventual collapse of the ecosystem. 

The drought this year has been truly epic. Lake Mead, the country's largest resevoir is now 65% empty. The US Bureau of Reclaimation has declared an emergency, and slashed permissible withdrawals from the Colorado River. The Cascade snow pack was quickly absorbed by the arid landscape, so very little cold run-off reached the river, causing low flows and elevated water temepratures that are favorable to C. shasta. A shortage of river water prevented the Bureau from releasing a pulse of cleansing water downriver to flush out the worms that carry the parasite. This over=appropriation exacerbated by drought caused stakeholders to engage in a counterproductive flurry of circular lawsuits. This situation confirmed what had been known but perhaps not openly admitted, that the Kalamath Basin is not capable of meeting all the demands upon it for water. Cattle herds were culled resulting in depressed prices, and the Yurok tribe closed its fishing season for the fith straight year leaving families without traditional salmon meals. 

More importantly from a conservation standpoint, are the impacts on the Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge. What was once a vibrant reserve of important migratory bird habitat is now according to one observer, "a big mud puddle".  Botulism, triggered by increased heat. killed at least 60,000 ducks last year. A half century ago, seven million waterfowl passed through the Kalmath Basin on their way south to California's Sacramento River valley. Today, a million birds is considered a good year. 

Stakeholders now look fondly upon unprecedented  agreements reached between 2010 and 2014 to reallocate and rehabilitate the river system and its salmon populations. Remarkably the agreements were reached without the support of local "Tea Party" politicians who oppposed the initiatives becuase of the dam removals. Plans for removal of the dams has gone ahead despite the lack of political support in Washington.  Now, the removals seem to be on track without the other provisions of the historic treaty of the Kalmath that would have increased the likelyhood of saving Klamath salmon and two species of suckers prized by the indeginous. The dam removals are pending before the FERC, which does not plan to issue a final decision until 2022, meaning demolition would not actually start before 2024. The delay increases the chances that the Klamath salmon will not make it to the day their river is returned to them. 

Perhaps Joe Munchkin should travel to southern Oregon to see for himself what climate change does to people and the fish they eat.  He can afford it.

Weekend Music

Few singers of popular music have the vocal talent to cross musical genres with apparent ease. This clip shows one: Linda Ronstatd sings a norte Mexicano favorite about a "fiesta del sol, una fiesta de charro". A challenging song to sing live at the Grammies, but Linda sings it with gusto and pride in her ethnic heritage. Ably backed by Mariachi Vargas. She wants to ride a bull to impress her amor. Umpa!

'Toontime: This Week in Trump

credit: S. Sack, Minneapolis Star-Tribune; Wackydoodle sez: Mo' kick than 'shine!

House Select Committee investigating the J6 Insurrection subpoenaed Jeffery Clark, a former DOj assistant attorney general who plotted with Herr Trumpillini to overthrow the US governmet by pressuring the Department of Justice to deceitfully declare the election results fraudulent. By doing so they hoped to convince Repugnant dominated swing state legislatures to NOT certify their election returns in favor of Joe Biden. They intended to disrupt the certification process long enough to invoke the Twelve Amendment, in which case the House of Representatives would vote to decide who won the election. Repugnants hold a one state edge in congressional delegations. Such a scheme, outlined in the Eastman memo, seems preposterous, but it appealed to the desperate, malignant narcissist occupying the White House, and he acted to implement it.  This set of facts constitutes a conspiracy to overthrow the lawfully elected government of the United States.

The Committee also plans to refer Steve Bannon, the former guy's chief political advisor, to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution for contempt of Congress. He has overtly refused to respond to his subpoena to testify before the Committee. Three other subpoena recipients have so far refused to appear, but are allegedly "engaging" with the Committee. What the parameters of that engagement are is not clear. But what is clear is that the Committee will not allow a game of 'rope a dope' that occurred during the Mueller investigation and subsequent impeachments. Whether the current DOJ headed by a cautious Attorney General will prosecute referrals from Congress is also unclear since the context of the subpoenas is fraught with political considerations. The pretext for non cooperation--executive privilege--is legally extremely unlikely given that the current president has stated he will not invoke the doctrine, except on a case by case basis. A tranche of White House documents from the National Archives has already been formally passed by the administration. Executive privilege with regard to Bannon is particularly tenuous since he has not been a member of the executive staff since 2017.

Nevertheless, Der Leader can litigate the issue in order to delay the Committee's progress.  If Garland proves to be intimidated or uncooperative, civil enforcement of Committee subpoenas in federal court is an available option, but also a potentially lengthy process. Recipients could be incarcerated until they comply with enforcement orders to testify and produce; but they could hold out until the current Congress ends. The Committee only has until then to to complete its report on the origins of the Insurrection. Senator Dick Durbin, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Commitee, told reporters upon release of its report Trump would have, “shredded the Constitution to stay in power”. An important point to remember is that coups do not have to be successful to be illegal--just ask Adolf.

Creature Feature: Wolves in Germany, the Real Story

LOOK....at this video to understand the actual behaviors of wolves in the wild, which differs from their behaviors in captivity.  You will see security video of a wolf crossing the river Oder into Saxony from Poland at the beginning of their repopulation of Germany in 2000. Watch an alpha female kill an elk by herself to feed her family in Yellowstone National Park:

EU Moves to Protect Beasts

The EU has decided to reimburse farmers for damages caused by large carnivores such as bears, lynxes, and wolves. Costs for erecting electric fences and guard dogs are also included in the program. The development comes as populations of large carnivores rebound from near extinction under legal protection by the state. There are now an estiamted 17,000 brown bears in Europe spread over 22 countries. They are still rare, but in some places like Catabria, Spain they have doubled in number over ten years.

Wolf numbers in Germany have increased since crossing over the Öder from Poland to the point that they spill over into the Netherlands and allegedly take sheep. Occasional wolf sightings have been made in the Netherlands since 2015; now It appears from sign on the ground that at least one wolf pack has established itself there. France has seen a sharp increase in the amount of predation on sheep with 10,000 incidents recorded in 2016. Since returning to France from Italy, wolves there probably number over 500. Denmark now has its first resident wolf pack in 200 years. Aarhus University has permission to tag and follow ten wolves in order to protect them from hunters. Jutland farmers are concerned that the wolves are varying their normal diet of deer with some occasional sheep.

Wolves suffer from bad PR. Their "big bad wolf" persona of legend is mostly myth say animal behaviorists. They are highly social, cooperative and intelligent animals. In fact in a classic test of intelligence and cooperative behavior they exceed our domesticated dogs. In the rope-pulling test, where subjects are only rewarded if they pull on ropes together to reach a tray of food, scientists found wolves succeeded 100 times in 416 attempts, about the same performance level as chimpanzees. Dogs, however succeeded only twice in 472 attempts, probably because they were waiting for the scientists to just give them the food. It is the wolf's cooperative social behavior that made it a good candidate for human domestication around thirty thousand years ago. This long period of association with humans eventually altered wolf behavior and genes resulting in a unique canine species.

Conservationists hope that new relaxed rules for full compensation, including veterinarian treatment for affected livestock, will reduce the need for culls and human revenge attacks. In a loose economic union like the EU, there will always be states that do not comply with the central government regulations. In Romania compensaton for predator attacks have been witheld. Some scare mongering by politicans has also taken place, raising concern that humans could be endangered. These claims are dismissed as unlikely by animal behavior experts who say the natural behavior of larger carnivores is to avoid humans if possible as they are not natural prey and are considered dangerous by the animals. Millenia of agressive behavior by humans has ingrained their avoidance behavior.

In the US, the culture war around the return of wolves to the wild continues apace. Idaho has declared open season the wolf after federal legal protections were removed by the former regime. Federal Department of Agriculture killed eight Idahao wolf pups in their forest den recently. Their extermination,  deemed necessary by the agency, has caused an outrage among conservationists. The Timberline pack was adopted by a Boise high school in 2003. The wolves were studied and tacked by science students since them. This spring the Timberline den was found empty. Students told media that they are sending a letter to President Biden to protest the inhumane treatment of wolves in their state. Under pressure from MAGA acolytes the Repugmant legislature passed new hunting rules that allow unlimited hunting of wolves including baiting them into traps, and shooting from an assortment of motorized vehicles including aircraft. A former science teacher at the high school told the Idaho Statesman, "Idaho, Montana and Wyoming are in an all-out frontal assault on wolves, something has to be done. It's inhumane, it's unethical and it's not ecologically sound." The Biden administration has said the US Fish & Wildlife Service is looking into reimposing federal protection under the Endangered Species Act. [grey wolf pups; credit Getty Images]

Krysten Sinema Is the Chamber's Made Girl

It is difficult to believe that Senator Sinema was once a "green" activist. Her first race for Congress in 2012 pitted her, a progressive bi-sexual outsider, against a corporate financed conservative in a heavily Democratic district.  She barely won after a nasty campaign. It took AP six days to call the race for her. She learned from the experience that money and power was on the other side of the fence. She quickly joined the so-called "Problem Solvers" caucus in the House that is funded in part by a Wall Street front group, "No Labels", which promotes allegedly non-ideological policy initiatives that in reality serve the interests of corporate America. Sinema began voting with Republicans and corporate Democrats to deregulate big banks, restrict Social Security and Medicare, and to make it harder for government to protect consumers and investors. She voted with the notoriously conservative Chamber of Commerce 77% of the time in her first term in Congress. When she ran for re-election in 2014, the Chamber returned her favors by endorsing her against a Tea-Party candidate. She was one of only five Democrats the Chamber found acceptable.

Given her sell-out to the plutocracy as a House member, it is not inexplicable for her to be blocking Biden's social policy initiative in the Senate by repeating the plutocracy's party line that the plan is too expensive and generous to ordinary Americans--despite the fact that seventy per-cent of her constituents support Biden's agenda. Just like in the Mafia, once a made man, always a made man. Sinema has become the poster child for the Money Power that has corrupted Congress in the postCitizen United era, which equates purchased political influence with protected free speech. The Founders never intended that corporations be given the same political rights as human beings. Corporations as we know them did not exist in the late 18th century. Justice Stevens wrote in his dissent in that case, "Politicians who fear that a certain corporation can make or break their reelection chances may be cowed into silence about that corporation.” He must have been thinking of the "Sinema Girl" when he wrote that.

COTW: Peabody's Coal Train

When Joe Manchin3 said he was never a liberal, you have to give him credit for being consistent.  His investment portfolio totally corroborates his boast.  Look at this:

A whopping 71% of his investment income is from one company, Enersystems, a coal distributor to electric power generators, of which he owns $3 million in shares. The company also deals in "waste coal" or as it is known in West Virginia, "gob". Gob contains more mercury than bituminous coal and higher levels of sulfur, creating tons of polluting waste coal ash when burned. Easy to understand why he is willing to hold hostage the Democratic Caucus in the Senate. He will do everything he can to derail the Biden social agenda and its initial efforts to reduce global warming. The consequence?  Here, look at this:

Carbon emission levels have returned to pre-pandemic trajectory. That spells catastrophe for the planet. If you think Earth should not be held hostage by greedy capitalists that expect their "entitlements" to preferential tax treatment, unaccountability for trashing the planet, and exploitation of public resources contact Senator Manchin and tell him to get in line with the rest of his party or get out.  Because your children deserve a healthy place to live--space aboard the rocket ships is limited!

'Toontime: This Week in Trump

credit. D. Fitzsimmons

Significant developments this week are several.  First, the House Select Committee issued three more subpoenas to organizers of "Stop the Steal" rallies about the January 6th Insurrection. These are in addition to the eleven already outstanding.  The Committee will have to take steps to enforce the subpoenas issued to former White House staffers including his former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and Steve Bannon his former chief political advisor because Herr Trumpillini has instructed them to defy legal process.  The Committee's chair has said they will use criminal referrals for contempt of Congress. One glitch in that plan is that Dan Scavino, former deputy head of White House communications, cannot be located for service of his subpoena to testify.  US Person finds that a little strange; he is not a homeless individual and uses the Internet regularly. Criminal contempt could not be more overdue in view of the stone wall the regime erected during the two impeachment efforts.  It must be clear to committee members by now that they are dealing with an attempted coup d'état by Herr Trumpillini and his gang.

The Senate Judiciary Committee dropped a bombshell this week. It revealed in its interim report  the intense effort by the would-be dictator to pressure the Department of Justice into supporting his systematic, mendacious claims that the election was fraudulent. He held eleven meetings with DOJ leaders between November 3rd and January 20th when Joe Biden was sworn in.  The report implicates Mark Meadows and former DOJ acting head of the civil division, Jeffery Clark, in the effort to force cooperation" with the "Big Lie" and thereby discredit the election result.  It should be noted that the "Big Lie" continues to this day, with the tacit endorsement of the entire party of insurrection since they have refused to disavow the compulsive lying of their party leader.  In the minority report of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Repugnants essentially conclude Trump did nothing wrong because his attempted coup failed.  Another example of the fanciful circular reasoning they used to thwart two impeachment attempts in the Senate.

On January 3td Herr Trumpillini wanted to install co-conspirator Clark as acting head of DOJ. Clark was willing to participate in a plan formatted by John Eastman, a right wing lawyer and academic, to subvert the election by contesting results on the grounds of fraud at the certification of the Electoral College vote.  Trump was attracted to Eastman when he saw him appear on Fox TV. Top leaders of the DOJ present at the meeting where the deranged president floated his choice of Clark as Attorney General refused to participate, threatening to resign en masse. US Attorney B J Pak of Atlanta actually did resign under pressure from Trump because he refused to investigate the Georgia election results. Trump told top Justice Department officials that Mr. Pak was a never-Trumper, and he blamed Mr. Pak for the F.B.I.’s failure to find evidence of mass election fraud there. Soon after the January 3rd confrontation with DOJ top officials, Trumpillini contacted acting Assistant US Attorney Patrick Donoghue to ask him to look into reports that Homeland Security had taken possession of a truck load of ballots outside Atlanta. This was after the December 1st announcement by AG Barr that DOJ had found no evidence of voter fraud significant enough to change the election results in Trump's favor.

What the report shows clearly is that the former guy was totally invested in subverting elections results he could not accept by direct and repeated participation in the "Big Lie" propaganda offensive. One committee member described Trump as "being in up to his neck".  The evidence produced so far shows he possessed the criminal intent to subvert democracy. On December 14th Trumpillini emailed a set of talking points claiming non-existent voter fraud in Michigan to Jeffery Rosen who was acting Attorney General after Bill Barr resigned the same day. He also sent a purported examination of Dominion Voting System problems in Michigan. For the next three weeks he continued to pressure DOJ into investigating these and other specious claims of fraud. Mr Rosen, Donoghue, and Pak all testified that the former president was not seeking legal advice, but pressuring them to subvert the Constitution in violation of their oaths of office.

This active effort to subvert democracy was joined by Congressman Scott Perry of Pennsylvania.(R) , a member of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus. Perry called Richard Donoghue, acting Deputy Attorney General to demand investigation of debunked election fraud allegations in his state. He complained the agency was not doing enough to investigate election fraud. Perry requested Clark's participation in the regime's efforts to undermine the election results. He took him to a meeting in the Oval to discuss voter fraud and recommended to Donoghue that Clark become more involved in DOJ's handling of fraud investigations. The Judiciary Committee is interested in obtaining testimony from Clark, and has referred his activity on behalf of Trumpillini to the DC Bar disciplinary office.

The House Select Committee continues to collect evidence of the conspiracy within the White House and GOP sycophants to illegally keep Trump in power beyond January 20th. One truly unsettling aspect of this alarmingly dangerous putsch attempt is that Der Leader would do it again, if given the chance. He continues to publicly claim the election of Joe Biden was fraudulent, dong further damage to our government's credibility; as a private citizen he is obstructing Congress by encouraging his former staff to defy subpoenas.  Fortunately we may invoke the 14th Amendment, if we are wise enough to use it, to put an end to his neurotic dreams of autocratic power.

credit: D. Castellejos

Fat Bears Week

The world enjoyed fat bear week and a winner was crowned on October 6th. Fat bears live in Katmai National Park, Alaska. The native bears prepare for winter hibernation by gorging themselves, mostly on salmon. Prior to last year, the winning bear's massive bulk was judged approximately . But Joel Cusick who works for the National Park Service came up with a way to use laser technology to measure the fat bears of Katmai. Cusick was observing the bears at world famous Brooks Falls when the idea hit him: use a LIDAR scanner to measure a fat bear's volume. LIDAR, which stands for light detection and ranging, emits light beams to measure three dimensional objects and areas. Archeologists are using LIDAR to see through the rainforests of Central America to find previously undiscovered Mayan buildings and settlements. This is the first time the technology has been used to measure the size of bears.  The new technique could be very useful and less intrusive for measuring wildlife difficult or dangerous to weigh at close quarters such as polar bears.

Katmai bears are usually measured in the spring when they are thin from hibernation. The skinny bears are easier to lift by pulleys for weighing. The process is labor intensive and requires tranquilizing the animal, always a risky business. Using LIDAR only takes a few seconds to scan a bear's bulk as they stand almost motionless at the falls waiting to catch a spawning salmon in their jaws. Their wet fur provides a good backboard for light waves to bounce off. The system software does the rest. There is still a bit of guesswork going on since a density measurement is needed to covert volume measurements into mass measurements. Cusack uses a rough estimate of bear density, figuring bears are 40% fat and 60 water. Last year Bear 474 won the competition [see chart]. Cusack confirmed that bear was the fatest with his measurement of 22.6 cubic feet of volume, equivalent to 1416 lbs.

This year the winner is #480 Otis who was a runner up last year [see chart], but also a three time champion, winning in 2014, 2016 and 2017. Nearly 800,000 votes were cast before Otis was crowned fattest bear. Katmai bears can pack on four pounds a day as they feast on one of the largest sockeye slamon runs in the world. Green Kudos to Otis!

New!: WHO Approves Malaria Vaccine

One of the great scourges of mankind may soon go the way of measles, polio and smallpox. The World Health Organization approved a preventive vaccine for malaria, a tropical disease thakills 500,000 a year, mostly children. The disease is one of the oldest known and most lethal diseases. It has proved difficult to control since it is spread by abundant mosquitoes in Sub-Saharan Africa during the rainy season. Also, the parasitic amoeba Plasmodium falciparum is especially resilient causing children in some regions to have on average six malaria episodes a year, and is just one of five pathogens that cause the disease. The parasite is able to modify its genes to produce a variety of proteins that help it evade a person's immune defenses for months.  [photocredit: Omikron]

malaria in red blood cells

The new vaccine developed by parma giant GlaxoSmithKline is the first vaccine for any human parasitic disease. In clinical trials the drug was effective in forty percent of  severe malaria cases in the first year, but dropped off to near zero by the fourth year. Some experts have questioned the investment in the vaccine by poor countries with many other difficult problems. A model study estimated that countries with the highest levels of malaria infection could prevent 23,000 deaths of young children and perhaps 5.4 million cases. When coupled with other preventive drugs and mosiquito control it is much more effective. Despite its drawbacks, the vaccine represents a significant development in fighting human parasites. Malaria research is strewn with drug candidates that never passed clinical trials. Insecticide-treated mosquito nets, the most widespread preventive measure, have only cut deaths of children under five from malaria by about 20%.

Given in four doses between ages 1.5 and 5 years, more than 2.3 million doses have been administered in Kenya, Malawi and Ghana. The immunization has been relatively easy to distribute given the effort to immunize people during the corona virus pandemic. The next step to making the vaccine widely available is for the global vaccine alliance, GAVI, to determine if Mosquirix is a worthwhile investment. COVID-19 vaccine production and distribution presents a hurdle for any new vaccine coming to market.

In another big Pharma story, New Jersey based Mereck is seeking emergency approval for its proprietary new drug to treat COVID-19. Early trials indicate the pill, molnupiravir is effective in preventing hospitalization of patients with mild to moderate cases of COVID-19. Patients undergo a five day course of treatment with the antimviral drug. The pill was developed with tax dollar funding.

The United States Department of Defense contributed $10 million in funding to Emory University from which the drug was licnesed by a private drug company, Ridgeback Biotheraputecs in 2020. The US National Intitutes of Health also contributed $19 million in grants to Emory for drug research. The US government placed an intial order for 1.7 million courses of treatment. The cost is $712 per patient. However, researchers revealed tha the pill costs Merck only $1.74/ unit or $17.74 per regimen. That math results in a markup of $4,000%! Merick expects to produce 10 million courses of treatment that could garner up to $7 billion in revenue making it one of the ten most profitable drugs ever. Under a 1980 law (35 USC 203) the federal government can intervene and allow a third party to licence a proprietary drug, if a company which received public funding for research refuses to make the drug available to the pubic on reasonable terms. Understandably it has never exercised those rights. One more reason the US needs to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices.

COTW: We Have Been Here Before

Is COVID-19 releasing its grip on the world? It appears that infection cases are dropping worldwide, The chart shows a 30% decrease in the US since late August. Or is this just part of an unexplained two month cycle?

Whether this trend continues during the winter when more people are indoors for longer periods remains to be seen. There is also a vast resevoir of unvaccinated. Then there are places like Alaska which has the worst infection rate in the world. The state has resorted to triage:

Epidemeologists think COVID-19 will be with us for a while as the virus shows remarkable flexibility in responding to its environment. According to the CDC there have been 10,510 new deaths caused by COVDI-19 in the last seven days. If that rate continues there will be an estimated one million deaths from SARS-CoVID-2 by the end of this year, surpassing the death toll from the 1918 flu pandemic by a wide margin.

Yukon River Salmon Spawn Fails

For the first tiime in living memory king and chum salmon have not migrated up the Yukon River. Drying racks on the banks normally filled with salmon are empty. "Nobody has fish in their freezer right now", says a tribe member who grew up with the annual salmon harvest. Alaska has banned salmon fishing on the Yukon in response to the dewindling number of fish. Alaska natives rely on the annual spawn to subsist over the winter. They are frustrated by the lack of control they have over a traditional resource.

Scientists are unable to conclusively pinpoint a cause of the failure, but many think a warming Bering Sea and overexploitation of fish stocks at sea are primary factors. Salmon are often by-catch of commerical netting operations. King or chinook salmon have been in decline for years, but chum salmon were plentiful until last year. Fall chum numbers are dangerously low on the river, one of the longest in North America.

Alaska natives are paying the price of practices of previous generations, and are outraged that the state and federal governments are not more responsive to their concerns. Salmon protein is critical to their diets in a land that goes into deep freeze during the winter. In the remote Alaska interior, roads can be dozens of miles away, and grocery stores are hard to find taking hourse to reach, even by plane. A gallon of milk can cost $10 and and pound of steak $34.

Alaska native tribes have petitioned the federal government for aid and a congressional hearing on the salmon collapse. Alaska's GOP governor has requested federal disaster relief, and coordinated an airlift of 90,000 pounds of fish to needy villages. A descendant of a village founder told an interviewer, "Salmon, to us, is life."

Weekend Music: Soundtrack of Your Life

US Person thinks that most readers cherish music that is closely connected to a period in their lives--a soundtrack that accompanies the videotapes of the mind.  This recording by perhaps the greatest rock band in history, was a double A side release with "Strawberry Fields Forever" (Lennon). In the lyrics McCartney reminisces about his adolescence in Liverpool, specifically the neighborhood around Smithfield Road were the roundabout is. Although more conventionally sentimental than Lennon's psychedelicly influenced memories of Strawberry Fields, another Liverpudlian landmark, it is nevertheless poignant. The pretty nurse selling poseies from a tray, "feels as if she is in a play, she is anyway". The video begins with a classic closeup of a young Lennon walking to meet his mates. Lennon upsets the tea table when the servants fail to bring him his instrument.US Person, who sojourned in Europe as a teenager, is reminded of his equestrian lessons, tea time with Mum, and pirate radio rocking in from the North Sea:

COTW: Gerrymandering 101

This chart provides an instructive example of partisan line drawing at work, It comes from Nebraska's Second Congressional District, the only one in the state to vote for Joe Biden at the last election:

credit: Daily Kos

The Omaha metro area is the blob of purple floating in a sea of green Trumpland. Upper left is the redistricting accomplished by the Repugnant majority in the state's only legislative chamber, the Unicameral. The bottom chart is what the Democrats might have supported if they had a fair chance. That version would have increased the liberal margin by 4 points.They filibustered the alternate proposal shown in the upper right which would have cut into the Democratic vote margin by splitting the urban bloc.

The Second is significant because it is a swing district, and Nebraska is one of the few states that awards electoral votes by congressional district. Obama actually carried the Second in 2010. Repugnants, keen to prevent a long-term swing to the left, promptly redrew boundaries to cut the southern suburb of Bellevue off from the rest of the urban population center. It had been a part of the Second District for decades prior. Bellevue voted Trump 55-38 in 2016, but that was reduced to 51-46 last year. In the latest approved version the conservatives carved out more of Saunders County--rural, deep red Trumpland--and attached it to more liberal, urban Omaha. The end result is a wash, with the vote margin still 52-46 in favor of the Blues.

COTW: This Week in Trump

credit: K. Siers

First off, US Person would like the CMM to stop referring to the corporate sponsored members of Congress who are obstructing their own party's policy agenda as "moderates". These few recalcitrant individuals are not "moderates" or "centrists" by any exaggeration of the meanings. The Biden social policy bill is hugely popular with the American people, even in their own states.  They are not representing their constituents' interests, but the interests of their corporate and wealthy donors. Manchin told reporters,"I’ve never been a liberal in any way, shape or form", and Sinema was so barefaced as to attend a conference of special interest donors opposed to Biden's agenda she blocks in the Senate. Her own state party has voted "no confidence" in her. These legislators are extremists. Certainly they are not loyal Democrats. To refer to them as moderates gives undue credibility to the self-interested obstructionism in which they are engaged, and gives a patina of legitimacy to their extreme position. Joe Manchin makes about $500,000 each year directly from stock in his coal brokerage company. Biden proposes to raise taxes on those making over $400,000 annually, and reduce reliance on coal burning. Consider the source of this syntax--mass media owned by corporations who will pay more taxes if the reconciliation bill is passed. Manchin heartily supports a bloated defense budget costing $778 billion a year, but will not support a ground-breaking social program costing $350 billion a year.  Talk about "fiscal insanity"!  Radical corporatists would be a more appropriate descriptor.  If reconciliation fails, they both should be invited to leave the party of democracy.

Meanwhile in Trumpworld, the Select J6 Committee of the House issued more subpoenas this week apparently aimed at discovering the connection between Individual One and his immediate circle to the organizers of the insurrection. One of the organizers subpoenaed, Katrina Pierson was a veteran of Trump's political campaign. Other targets were Amy Kremer, Caroline Wren, and Maggie Mulvaney, members of Women for America First. Pierson had a meeting with Herr Trumpillini on January 4th in which he asked about speakers for a separate event. She informed him of the rally held on January 5th organized by a group named the Eighty Percent Coalition. The organizer of that event was also subpoenaed.

Trump advertised the rallies in Washington which drove attendance up.  He billed the January 6th rally where he spoke just before his supporters marched on the Capitol, as a "wild protest" against the alleged election fraud that removed him from office. He had been touting that BIG LIE for months previously. He told his supporters it was, "statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 election." Several lawsuits by police and legislators accuse him of inciting the mob violence that occurred during its riotous forced entry into the Capitol building. According to a Committee news release,“The subpoenas seek a range of records that include materials dealing with the planning, funding, and participation in the events and bus tours; social media activity of associated entities; and communications with or involvement of Trump Administration officials and lawmakers.” Stay tuned to this space.

credit: D. Whamond
"...in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility;
because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted
in the deeper strata of their emotional nature."--Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf