COTW: "See the USA, In Your Chevrolet"

With another million 'Mericans added to the unemployment rolls this week, US Person thought to post another ghoulish indicator of the economic calamity facing us:

People are not replacing their older cars.  This fact could be attributed to a) with no wages, you cannot afford a new, higher car payment, and b) car quality is improving, allowing people to keep their existing rides longer.  New car and truck sales were down 24% over last year in the first half of 2020.  Sales are expected to return to 1970s level:

chart credits: Wolf Richter

With more old cars on the road, car makers find it increasingly difficult to sell units.  The national fleet has grown, now at 253 million cars, light trucks, SUVs and vans, but the pandemic has hit the industry hard, reducing both the number of sales and the amount of driving. Automakers have responded by increasing their sticker prices.  Wolf Richter says that car prices have increased by 70% from 1990 to 2020, and pickup prices by 163% based on representative models.

Mauritius Grapples with Oil Spill

Latest: Thirty-nine dolphins and three whales have washed ashore dead in Mauritius, apparently victims of the oil spill island officials have failed to control. The country's fisheries minister has called the event "a sad coincidence".  The grounded tanker spit in two and sank after about 3000 tons of fuel oil had been pumped off the ship.  The ship ran aground on a coastal reef on July 25th.  Officials were slow to react to the grounding.  The tanker began leaking oil into Mahebourg Lagoon on August 6th, fouling a protected wetlands and an islet that is a wildlife sanctuary.  Thousands of resident volunteered to control the spill with makeshift equipment, and ferry dozens of baby tortoises and rare plants to safety.  Why the ship was off course is unexplained at this point.  The tanker's captain and first officer have been charged with "endangering safe navigation".  The government is seeking compensation for the spill from Nagasaki Shipping, owner of the MV Wakashio.
 
{11.08.20}The island nation of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean is grappling with a oil spill from a Japanese tanker grounded on a coral reef off the southeastern coast.  The tanker, MV Wakashio, struck the reef on July 25th.  It lay stranded for 10 days before it began leaking fuel oil.  Fortunately the tanker was not carrying cargo at the time of it grounded, but it did have 3,894 tons of fuel oil on board.  The spill threatens several natural areas along the coast including the largest remaining wetland in Mauritius, Pointe d'Esny, Aigrettes Nature Reserve, and Blue Bay Marine Area. Clusters of mangrove are found along the eastern coast and are areas of high biodiversity, often serving a spawning grounds for numerous species of fish.


Booms have been deployed around the stricken ship, but have proven largely ineffective in containing the 900 ton spill headed up the coast, driven by winds and currents.  About 500 tons of fuel have been pumped out of the ship, and the breach appears to have been plugged. There is concern that the tanker could break up before 2500 metric tons of fuel are removed from the tanks.  Mauritius officials admitted they are unprepared for a spill disaster; the Wakashio is the third ship to run aground in five years.  The nation's prime minister called for international assistance the day after the spill began.  The islands are known as a tropical paradise of azure waters and enticing beaches.  It is also a port of call for ships traversing the Indian Ocean.  For years environmental activists have been warning about the proximity of international ocean traffic near to fragile marine ecosystems.  Akihiko Ono, executive vice president of Mitsui OSK Lines, the ship owner, said his company was deeply sorry for "the great trouble we have caused."  No estimate of the damage to the coastline, death toll to marine life, or cost of the cleanup have been made public.

'Toontime: Fantasy 'Merica

After three nights of non-stop mendacity from RNC, your head must be spinning!  Read PNG and you will receive the anecdote.  No, not hydroxyQ, but the news fit to repeat.  Here are this week's hilarious 'toons:

credit: Rick McKee

Only in the Heel's 'Merican Nightmare' does a paralyzed victim of police brutality get handcuffed to his hospital bed.

credit: Horsey, Los Angeles Times

BC Idonwanna: Look, which one is Orange man, now?

The Heel had the unmitigated gall to call the kettle black in last night's rambling TV ad for himself. US Person says give him the old "Trojan Horse"; it has got to be better than this inexplicable freak show in the Swamp!

 Is it me?....

Lake Charles Chemical Plant on Fire

Laura devastated the western Louisiana coast with 150 mile an hour gusts and huge storm surge.  The hurricane came ashore as a Category 4 after it rapidly intensified in the Gulf of Mexico.  Perhaps the worse damage inflicted by Laura is the fire at BioLab chemical plant in Lake Charles.  The plant is billowing toxic smoke across Interstate 10.[photo credit, Getty Images]  According to records the plant manufactures chlorine based products.  Chlorine is flammable and in certain situations, explosive. In 2019 the plant produced 115 million pounds per year of tricholoroisocyanuric acid, and disodium isocyanurate. When burned the acid releases chlorine gas, which was used as a weapon in WWI. Another facility on the same site manufactures dimethlyl hydrazine, a rocket propellant, for the US government. This plant, owned by the Lonza Group, is already considered to be a major emitter of air pollutants including sulfur dioxide and volatile organic compounds.

What other damage has the hurricane done?  Ironically, a 1915 confederate

memorial statute that the town voted to keep standing just two weeks ago was toppled to the ground by the hurricane's force. The number of severe hurricanes in the Atlantic has doubled since the 1990s, in conformity with predictions by climate scientists that global warming would intensify storms. LOOK!--at this chart:

Add caption

Washington State Kills Off Another Wolf Pack

State wildlife authorities in Washington killed the last two remaining wolves of the Wedge Wolf Pack on August 13th. Reaction from wolf advocates was heated, blaming the state agency for expediency in its action, and failing to protect a state endangered species.  The state has killed thirty-four wolves, almost all of them for livestock conflicts in the Kettle River Range, prime wolf habitat.  Twenty-nine of the wolves killed have been at the demand of the same livestock owner. The extermination of a wolf pack in this area is a repeat of the 2012 slaughter in which all but one wolf of an eight member pack were killed.

Currently, the state has no mandate for non-lethal wolf control measures to be used before lethal removal is authorized.  Advocates have petitioned Gov. Inslee to reform the state's wolf management plan.  A activist on the state's wolf management advisory group was removed for disagreeing with the departments liberal use of lethal means.  Advocates say there is no scientific evidence that supports lethal removal as a long-term solution to conflicts with livestock owners.  The state has issued a kill order for the Leadpoint Pack, whose territory borders the former Wedge Pack territory. 

NOAA Fails Right Whale

More: NOAA has apparently stopped an internal inquiry into the politicization of the agency's right whale protection activities. NOAA launched an inquiry in March after media reports of weakening protection for the critically endangered whale by the agency's "political team". According to the report in Roll Call the scientific conclusion that seismic blasting in the whales' calving area would further endanger the already rare whale was altered for political considerations since the finding conflicted with the regime's effort to open up the Atlantic seaboard to oil exploration.  The incident is reminiscent to the Heel altering an official NOAA weather map showing hurricane Dorian's storm track with a "Sharpie"® marker.

A watchdog group which requested an investigation was informed by the agency that an inquiry begun in April was being halted because of litigation against NOAA, It claimed litigation overlapped the internal agency inquiry.   Once considered in the top ranks of federal scientific organizations, NOAA's reputation for scientific integrity has suffered under the Heel.  The right whale it is supposed to protect is on the edge of extinction only about 400 individuals still inhabit the eastern seaboard, subjected to entanglement and collision.

{16.07.20} IUCN, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, placed the North Atlantic right whale, Eubalaena glacialis, on the list of critically endangered species last week.  The whale's eminent extinction is an entirely preventable event, but the regime does not care about other creatures that share this planet with us, just as it does not care about the hundreds of thousands sick and dying from a novel virus. Only about 400 right whales remain with fewer than 250 breeding age animals alive.  PEERS, the environmental organization for public employees, says that NOAA has tried to put a positive spin on the declining numbers instead of taking common sense precautions to protect the marine mammal from deadly entanglements in discarded fishing gear and collisions with ships speeding through their foraging and breeding zones.

Emails from early 2020 show career officials discussing the disappearance and presumed death of "Dragon", a breeding female, which the agency was loath to report to the public. It regularly reports sightings of calves, which stand little chance of survival without their mothers. A watchdog group has asked the Commerce Department's inspector general to investigate whether the agency has violated its own administrative order regarding the integrity of the agency's scientific findings. Counsel for the group wrote the inspector general, "The Trump administration’s practice of injecting politics into the scientific decision-making process risks NOAA’s credibility as a fact and science-driven agency."

NOAA has refused to aggressively regulate fishing boats in areas occupied by the endangered whale. In June, one of just ten calves born this season was struck by a boat off the New Jersey coast. No advisory was issued by authorities.  Speed warnings are only given out when three or more whales are known to be in a particular area.  Entanglement and collision are the leading causes of unnatural death among right whales, once hunted to near extinction by man.  In fact, the whale got its name because it was easier to kill than other species, like the sperm whale, which sometimes turned on its persecutors.  The right whales plight was intensified by the regime when it recently authorized commercial fishing in the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument.

In another move to weaken bedrock environmental laws, the Antichirst completed regulatory changes to the National Environmental Policy Act making it easier for exploiters to avoid the federal requirement for impact studies of federal actions.  The final rule sets hard deadlines of between one and two years for completion of a study, and in some cases, such as oil and gas development, removes the requirement entirely.  The new rules also eliminates the obligation for agencies to study the cumulative effect of a project on climate change. 

Predictably the corrupt occupant of the VWH is using the economic disruption caused by the pandemic to justify his rollback of more than 100 environmental protection laws and regulations as necessary to return to normal levels of economic activity.  A professor of economics at Barnard University, Dr. Belinda Archibong told interviewers, “Saying ‘We’re going to pull back on regulation’ does not mean that firms are going to start hiring more people. That’s complete nonsense. All that’s going to happen is it’s going to lead to more pollution, period.” Unemployment is at record levels, the highest since the Great Depression. Want to understand the modern US economy? Consumer spending consists of around 70% of GDP. Consumers do not spend when they have no wages. Wall Street does not hire factory workers or retail clerks, despite raking billions from government relief efforts.

Huzzah!...Trumpalooza drags on and on and on....

COTW: Repugnants on Display

two speakers at the RNC convention

REALLY?  No, US Person is not kidding. This St. Louis couple*, who pulled guns on BLM demonstrators passing by their home, appeared at the GOP convention.  Is this really what 'Merica has come to?  If so, then the democratic experiment begun 246 years ago is an abject failure--perhaps a predictable denouement given that the experiment was financed in the beginning by slave economics.  Any one honest enough to admit it, knows that the United States is a corporate oligarchy, not a democracy. Just ask participants in the Occupy Wall Street movement. Here is a chart that accurately describes the current COVID-based reality:

US COVID-19 DEATHS (est.): 258,000
DEATH VALLEY, CA: 130℉

No amount of fascistic, racist propaganda is going to wipe that measurable fact from the slate.  The simple choice is that this republic cannot afford four more, unreal years of 'THE HEEL, UNLEASHED':

the Heel greets his fanatics

*The McCloskeys live next door to a Jewish synagogue. The synagogue prides itself on raising fruits and vegetables on its property, as well as honey. The honey, however, is no more because the McCloskeys destroyed the Jewish honeybee hives located on the property line fence without taking the matter up with the synagogue. They claim the hives were theirs to destroy because the fence is six inches on their side of the line. Would you want these people as neighbors?--give me a break!