A cool front came through last night, and dropped the temperatures into the
low-mid 70s, so Skye and I decided to walk to the beach (instead of driving) and
meet Georgia there. In a neighbors lawn I saw this pretty little flower. Leafsnap identified it as Virginia Buttonweed:
Virginia buttonweed, Diodia virginiana, is one of the most difficult weeds to manage in home lawns throughout Louisiana. It is a deep-rooted perennial plant with a spreading growth habit.
One of main reasons why Virginia buttonweed is so difficult to manage is because it can reproduce itself by seeds, roots, or stems. Regular mowing of the lawn has the potential to spread Virginia buttonweed around the yard because stem fragments can easily root and start new plants. Some homeowners often resort to hand pulling but this too can lead to the spread of root and stem pieces. The best approach to managing Virginia buttonweed in the home lawn is to take an integrated approach and combine several control methods together.
I hope it didn't follow me home.
Anyway, it was a pretty nice day at the beach, though fossil hunting was mediocre because of all the sand, and muddy water. Oh well, we only had 615 teeth for July (I counted the month jar after we got home).
I saw a set of sail on a double masted boat way across the Bay. The combination of the mirage, the Schlieren Effect, and the earths curvature rendered it quite a remarkable image.
With full magnification out of my camera. I had a suspicion, but Marinetraffic.com confirmed that it was, in fact, the Pride of Baltimore II, under sail.
Pop star Jennifer Lopez and actor Ben Affleck — members of the celebrity elite
who’ve spent years browbeating Americans about the peril the planet faces lest
we curtail our carbon footprint — are in the midst of a glamorous vacation
around the Mediterranean, living on a $130 million carbon-spewing super
yacht.
Jennifer Lopez is among the celebrities who have been deemed
“super-emitters” by researchers, as
she was estimated to have taken 77 flights, travelling 139,187 miles, and
emitting 105 tons of carbon dioxide in 2017.
Now, in a seeming
affront to their own sacrosanct environmental standards, Lopez and Affleck’s
luxe European yacht trip has nevertheless taken them from Capri to Nerano,
with a stop in St. Tropez, according to a report by Elle. The pair have been
frolicking on the massive yacht for Lopez’s birthday getaway, which kicked off
on Saturday in St Tropez, France, reports Us Weekly.
Ecowatch noted
that “a superyacht with a permanent crew, helicopter pad, submarines and pools
emits about 7,020 tons of CO2 a year.”
I guess I should include a pic of Affect, just for diversity:
The “Love Don’t Cost a
Thing” singer also posted photos of herself on the $130 million vessel, which
showed off the pricy Foundrae jewelry Affleck reportedly got her for her
birthday. . . . Lopez and Affleck are
reportedly two months into rekindling
their romance — a saga with a 19-year timeline attached to it. But Bennifer
2.0’s carbon-gushing cruise around the Mediterranean Sea may cast doubt on
their commitment to fighting “climate change.
I don't really care what they do with their money, but don't ever attack me over my carbon footprint.
My guess is that the driver was a parent with serious mental problems. When they figure the cause of death of the children, charges may get filed. May not be competent to stand trial.
Baltimore County Police charged Nicole Michelle Johnson, 33, with neglect; failure to report the death of Joshlyn Marie James Johnson, 7, and Larry Darnell O’Neal, 5; disposal of their bodies and child abuse that resulted in the death of the two children. The cause and manner of their deaths are pending, police said.
Johnson is being held at the Baltimore County Detention Center in Towson after she waived her appearance at a brief bail review hearing Friday morning in district court.
Johnson had been caring for the two children since 2019 after their mother moved from Ohio to Maryland and could no longer care for the children, she told detectives, according to the court documents.
Dachelle Johnson wrote about the children in several social media posts after her sister’s arrest.
“I wish it was me instead. I wish I didn’t wake up tomorrow,” she posted on an Instagram page where she also shared a GoFundMe fundraiser to raise money to help bury her children.
I don't like to be judgmental, but I'm going to guess drugs and/or mental illness may have played a role in this tragedy. And the failure of the county government to follow up.
It would be one thing if the commission were principally concerned with
figuring out how protesters breached security. But the central purpose of the
commission -- whether Republicans cooperate or not -- is to create the
impression that the GOP is in the midst of attempting to overturning
"democracy." They want to use Jan. 6 to push their unconstitutional efforts to
nationalize elections. And they definitely want to use it to make Trump the
central topic of the 2022 midterms.
“She didn’t have to be killed, there were other options,” Witthoeft said of
her 110-pound, 5-foot-2 daughter. (Babbitt was unarmed.) “Then they dragged
her out like an animal, cleaned up the mess, and went about their business.”
A few weeks after Ashli was killed, Witthoeft said she finally
took her head off her pillow and started making calls. A staffer for Senator
Dianne Feinstein’s (D-Calif.) office at first hung up on her, insisting he
didn’t know who Ashli Babbitt was. Witthoeft called again; the same staffer
answered. She asked to speak with her senator for two minutes. “Ma’am, I am
sorry for your unfortunate situation but if your daughter hadn’t stormed the
Capitol, she wouldn’t have been shot,” Witthoeft said the staffer told her.
“Dianne Feinstein will never have two minutes for you.”
Matt Mayer at Da Fed has a Report that
Reveals Shocking Double Standards For Bringing U.S. Rioters To Justice "The sheer similarities and differences between the treatment of the
2020 rioters compared to the treatment of the January 6 riot rioters are
shocking." And another from Julie Kelly (who has been a pit bull with this
bone), ‘Unprecedented, Unreasonable, Unconstitutional, and Wrong’
"The Justice Department won’t have January 6 evidence ready until 2022 " by
which time many of the protesters will have been in jail longer than any
sentences they could serve on the misdemeanors for which they will likely be
charged.
[Judge]McFadden scolded the government for its backwards process. “You would
not arrest [someone] then gather evidence later. That’s not how this works.”
When Fifield said full discovery is in the best interest of the defendant,
McFadden shot back: “Freedom also is important to the defendant.” The
Trump-appointed judge raised concerns over Sixth Amendment violations. “This
does not feel what the Constitution [and] the Speedy Trial Act envisions.”
Trask is the man the FBI made the public face of the
Michigan kidnapping plot
that played a role in the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
Last fall, Trask helped gin up the anti-Trump publicity
surrounding the Michigan kidnapping plot. He
claimed
the FBI “thwarted” a plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer—a plot
we now know the FBI
itself hatched. One text message released inadvertently to the defense shows the FBI agent
who was overseeing the plot (likely Trask) directed his confidential
informants to solicit specific people, those targeted by Trask, so he could
entice these targets into committing arrestable crimes.
Final certified results declared Joe Biden defeated President Trump by about
20,600 votes, but since then Wisconsin's Supreme Court ruled tens of thousands
of absentee ballots may not have been lawfully cast because state officials
improperly exempted the voters from ID requirements.
Dave in Fla at Aces hears
Historical Echoes. History doesn't repeat, but it rhymes.
The election of 1824 represented the end of the Era of Good Feelings, and the
rise of the party system in Presidential elections. After the war of 1812, the
Federalist Party had collapsed, and in its wake twelve years of political
unity was expressed by all candidates being members of the
Democratic-Republican Party. This period came to a sudden end due to the
contested election of 1824.
Four candidates were running for
President: Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, William Crawford, and Henry
Clay. When the election was over, Andrew Jackson had won 41% of the popular
vote, and 99 electoral votes, while Adams had 31% of the popular vote and 84
electoral votes. Despite having won a plurality, Jackson lost the election in
the US House of Representatives. During the contingent election, Henry Clay
used his influence to have delegates ignore the instructions of their states,
and vote for Adams instead. Andrew Jackson is the only candidate ever to have
won a plurality of the electoral college, but lose the election. When Clay was
offered the Secretary of State position, Jackson and his supporters were
incensed, believing that Clay had been offered the position in exchange for
his influence.
Many of you learned about this election in your
history classes. What you may not be aware of is the positions of Andrew
Jackson and the platform he ran on. While he was an immensely popular figure
after his military success in Florida and at the Battle of New Orleans, he was
also a populist and champion of the working class. His major driving issue was
the elimination of growing corruption in the Federal Government. He was a
vocal opponent of the Second Bank of the United States, believing that the
institution existed solely to enrich the elites of the country. The economic
crises of 1819 and 1820 broadly harmed the working class, a voting block that
strongly supported Jackson nationwide during the election. . . .
Our freedoms are under threat as they have not been in a very long time. The
question is, what to do about it. Private action is appropriate; we should
support non-leftist alternatives to platforms like Facebook and Twitter, for
example. But that is not going to be good enough. The major platforms may be
natural monopolies on account of network effects, and I don’t know how
individual action can create alternatives to Amazon’s web hosting dominance or
the Apple-Google duopoly.
We were desperately trying to fill the "show hole" the other night, and I
remembered seeing ads for "Tomorrow War" on Prime. It was fine for a night,
though probably not to to Georgia's tastes. Prominent in the cast was YvonneStrahovski:
Yvonne Jacqueline Strzechowski (born 30 July 1982), known
professionally as Yvonne Strahovski, is an Australian actress of
television, film, and theatre. Primarily noted for her roles in dramatic
television, she has received numerous awards and nominations, including two
Primetime Emmy Award nominations and three Screen Actors Guild Award
nominations.
She is best known for roles as CIA agent Sarah Walker in the NBC spy drama series Chuck (2007–2012), Hannah McKay in the Showtime drama series Dexter (2012–2013), and CIA Agent Kate Morgan in the Fox event series 24: Live Another Day (2014). She stars as Serena Joy Waterford in the Hulu drama series The Handmaid's Tale (2017–present) . . .
Strahovski was born in Werrington Downs, New South Wales, Australia the daughter of Piotr and Bożena Strzechowski; her parents emigrated from Tomaszów Mazowiecki, Poland. . . .Strahovski is fluent in Polish and English, and employed it in a brief exchange with a colleague in the Chuck episode "Chuck Versus the Wookiee" and again in the episodes "Chuck Versus the Three Words" and "Chuck Versus the Honeymooners".
Another mostly overcast, warm, sweaty day here in slower Maryland
Lightening struck twice for Georgia regarding fossils, when she picked up this second dolphin/whale ear bone.
It's not quite as big or elaborate as the previous one, and it's a mirror in general form, so it's from the other side of the animal.
Here they are together, lined up (more or less) so you can see the similarities and differences.
I posted it to the fossil group, and I'm waiting for the real pros to weigh in, but according to Paul, it's an entirely different species, and maybe a different group.
Otherwise, not an outstanding day for fossils, 13 teeth, 1 drum's tooth, a Tilly bone, and crab claw.
The 1/6 rioters should be treated with the same severity as Black Lives Matter
rioters. Since that is not remotely possible, all else is political theater
and raw exercises of power, and I am weary of pretenses to the contrary.
"... he could be sued, he can be impeached. And none of the above is true
for Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, etc, no free speech rights against them,
no due process rights against them. And... we've seen more and more of a
coalescence between particular political and government leaders, putting
increasingly overt pressure on the tech companies to censor speech that
these politicians don't like and that they would be completely barred by the
First Amendment from directly censoring themselves.... So from from a legal
perspective... whether you call it collaboration or pressure, the
interrelationship between the two is constitutionally significant, because
even private sector actors are directly bound by constitutional norms,
including the First Amendment free speech guarantee, if you can show that
there is in the legal term to describe this is called entanglement,
sufficient entanglement between the government officials and the nominally
private sector actors, that if they are essentially conspiring with the
government doing the government's bidding, the government can't do an end
run around his own constitutional obligations that way....
WSJ,
MyPillow to Pull Ads From Fox News in Disagreement With Network "Mike Lindell, CEO of MyPillow, says Fox News refused to run ad
promoting an event linked to claims of widespread election fraud" I'll kind of
miss the ads, even though they're sort of corny.
“Here we have a two-star General who spends his days on social media hyping a
vaccine for an illness that poses minimal risk to his troops,” . . .
“When pressed on why America can’t win wars and why he embraces policies that
treat healthy people like biohazards, his first response is to accuse his
critics of treachery and then block them from view.”
In October of 2020, 14 people were arrested in Michigan and accused of
being participants in a plot to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. The governor
had imposed draconian restrictions on religious, travel and commercial
activities as a means, she claimed, to stem the spread of COVID-19. All of
her restrictions were eventually found by courts to be unconstitutional
under both the Michigan and the U.S. Constitutions.
Sixteen
plotters were supposedly planning to try the governor in a makeshift court
and, if convicted, to impose some sort of punishment. Before the plotters
could spring into action, the FBI arrested 14 of them. Two plotters were not
arrested since one of them was a paid FBI informant and the other was an
undercover FBI agent.
In pleadings filed in federal court last
week, the defendants revealed that the FBI enticed, cajoled and manipulated
them into this plot, and even trained them and paid their expenses.
Can
the government get away with planting the seeds of a crime in the minds of
innocent folks, providing them with the means for the crime, arresting them
before the crime takes place and then charging them with a crime that never
occurred?
Probably. But not if the defendants can afford to take it to trial.
U.S. Coast Guard special agents arrested the operator of a unlicensed fishing charter boat out of Kent Island, saying he endangered 34 passengers through his gross negligence.
Terrance Dale Roy, operator of Fishing Lady, could face up to six years in prison for each of his two felony charges, plus up to one year in prison for his single misdemeanor charge.
Coast Guard Investigative Services say Roy violated a USCG Captain of the Port Order when he took 34 paying passengers out on the head boat Father’s Day weekend—despite the fact that he hadn’t made necessary repairs after Fishing Lady sunk at a Kent Narrows pier back in May.
The Captain of the Port Order banned the boat from operating commercially “until the vessel’s seaworthiness was determined by Coast Guard professionals.” Sure enough, on the Father’s Day weekend excursion, Fishing Lady began taking on water that couldn’t be emptied using the boat’s bilge pumps, USCG says. Grasonville and Kent Island volunteer fire department marine units rescued all three dozen people on board.
The unlicensed head boat Fishing Lady was taking on water June 19, after being banned from operating due to a previous sinking. Grasonville Volunteer Fire Dept./Facebook
As a result of the incident, Roy is accused of failing to properly report a hazardous condition as required and operating his boat in a “grossly negligent manner.” The Coast Guard also found additional violations, including operating without a license and without proper documentation for commercial service.
Apparently this charter boat has been in trouble with the Coast Guard before. According to a 2014 Coast Guard press release, the Fishing Lady was removed from service that year, too, after it was found to have numerous safety violations and was taking passengers despite another Coast Guard order.
“Illegal passenger vessel operators pose a significant danger to the public and adversely impact legitimate operators who comply with federal safety requirements,” said Cmdr. Baxter Smoak, chief of prevention for Coast Guard Sector Maryland-National Capital Region.
The bodies of two children were found in a car during a traffic stop in Essex Wednesday night, Baltimore County police said in a news release.
Baltimore County officers pulled over a car on Eastern Boulevard near Wagners Lane around 11 p.m. July 28, police said. During the stop, officers found two dead children in the car.
The children were 5 and 7 years old, one boy and one girl, although Joy Stewart, director of public affairs for the department, could not confirm which child was older.
Stewart said there were “certain details about the car” that made officers “suspicious” and led to the stop.
The driver was taken into custody and the relationship between the driver and children remains under investigation, according to Stewart .
As of Thursday afternoon, no charges had been filed, according to Stewart.
I guess driving around with dead children in the back of the car is legal in Baltimore.
I haven't done much (anything yet) with the 2020 Olympics, being done here in 2021 thanks to the WuFlu, for a variety of reasons, including laziness, being pissed off at political statements, and just general lack of interest (and don't try to make me interested in having an opinion about Simone Biles), but I'll do this one: Da Caller, Amber English Sets New Olympic Record In Skeet Shooting, Brings Home Gold For USA
U.S. shooter and Army Lt. Amber English set a new Olympic record in skeet shooting and brought home the gold for Team USA during the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
The 31-year-old olympian scored the gold with 56 hits and set a new record for the games, USA Today reported Monday.
Good shooting, Lt. English. I doubt she will get much attention in the media.
The Maryland Department of Natural Resources (DNR) reports a third consecutive year of underwater grass loss in Maryland’s portion of the Chesapeake Bay in 2020. During the annual survey, 34,882 acres of underwater grasses were mapped in Maryland, representing 44% of the state’s 2025 restoration target and 30% of the ultimate restoration goal of 114,065 acres.
Record high rainfall and stream flows into the Chesapeake Bay in 2018 and 2019 led to higher levels of nutrient and sediment pollution, changes in salinity, and poorer water clarity in many of Maryland’s waterways. Habitat conditions remained poor in 2020, and underwater grass abundance declined 13% overall from the previous year.
After years of significant gains, more than 3,000 acres of underwater grasses were lost in the mid-Bay region, specifically the lower Chester River, Eastern Bay, the mouth of Choptank River, and the Little Choptank River. These declines were primarily in widgeon grass, a species that can rapidly increase or decrease from year to year with changes in water quality.
As usual, we find that weather conditions exert the most influence over year to year variation in the seagrasses.
Some areas of Maryland’s portion of the Bay showed improvements in underwater grass abundance. The iconic beds in Tangier Sound and the Susquehanna Flats, along with those on the Potomac River, including Mattawoman and Piscataway creeks, increased in 2020.
Underwater grasses were observed in the Wicomico River on the Eastern Shore for the first time since the survey began in 1984.
“Efforts underway by Maryland and our Bay partners to reduce nutrients in our waterways remain critical to our goal of increasing submerged aquatic vegetation in the Bay,” Maryland Natural Resources Secretary Jeannie Haddaway-Riccio said. “While extreme weather has had a real impact on our state’s underwater grasses, SAV are aiding in improving water quality and do provide important habitat in many of our waterways.”
“The improvements seen in Tangier Sound and on the Susquehanna Flats highlight the resilience of Maryland’s large, stable underwater grass beds, and emphasize the importance of protecting and preserving them,” said Becky Raves Golden, Living Resource Assessment Program Manager for DNR. “Many of the losses observed in 2020 were in areas where gains had been made in recent years, suggesting that recovering populations are more affected by the stress of poorer water quality than stable, resilient beds. There is still work to do to mitigate the impacts of multiple stressors on Maryland’s recovering underwater grasses.”
Despite the overall decline in statewide underwater grass abundance, underwater grasses in all or part of four Maryland rivers surpassed their restoration goals. These included the Northeast River at 122%; the Bush River at 127%; the middle Chester River at 287%; and the tidal fresh portion of the Chester River at 16,554% (the percentage of the goal attained is so high due to a very small segment restoration goal). An additional six river segments in Maryland reached 75% or more of their restoration goals, including the northern Chesapeake Bay, the upper Chesapeake Bay, Gunpowder River, Northeast River, Mattawoman Creek, and Wicomico River.
I also appreciate the recognition that because the weather conditions have differing local effects, and different species of seagrass respond differently, that there is substantial regional variation in the response.
When we arrived at the beach, this was the first thing that caught my eye.
That's way too close to the jetty rocks for me, but it's his hull.
Very cloudy today, but thin clouds; you could still see shadows at least intermittently. It was also in the mid to upper 80s and very humid
The best of 18 teeth, a nice Snaggletooth (aka Hemipristis) upper. We also got a couple of drum's teeth and decent piece of sting ray barb.
Georgia and Skye on the way home. The big guy in the blue shirt to Georgia's left is Paul Murdoch, a friend who also conducts fossil finding tours. He had a group with him today.
By the left’s own standards, January 6 wasn’t mostly peaceful–it was almost
completely peaceful. If, say, 300,000 people showed up to hear Trump speak,
and 600 got violent, that’s 0.2% of the crowd (600 is a HUGE overstatement, as
many of those arrested weren’t violent). When 1000 “protestors” showed up to demand justice
for Saintly George Floyd, and 200 were violent members of BLM and their
non-binary Ken doll sis-bros, that’s 20% of the crowd. That 20% proceeded to
burn Portland for over 100 nights, sack Washington D.C. for a solid month,
trash Chicago, and reduce Minneapolis to a burning rubble. Don’t forget
Seattle, Atlanta, and everywhere else. Portions of cities were taken over.
Black kids were shot and killed, and the lefty Pravda media introduced the
most hypocritical phrase of the century: “mostly peaceful.” Biden referred to
Antifa as “an idea,” and Jerry Nadler, in a spectacular display of deception,
called them “a myth.” The grandparents being arrested for strolling the
Capitol are labeled “insurrectionists,” while those Floyd-loving libs who
attacked police and burned buildings, cars, and businesses were mostly
ignored, if not rewarded. Antifa has made it clear that they want revenge. The January 6 protestors simply wanted to be heard.
Breitbart, Arrest Warrant Issued for Texas Democrat Who Fled to D.C. Only one? "Speaker Phelan issued a statement saying, in part, that
Cortez had “irrevocably broken my trust and the trust of the chamber.” The
speaker added that Cortez “represented to me and his fellow members that he
wanted to work on policy and find solutions to bring his colleagues back to
Texas.”"
Twitter is no longer even pretending that it is banning these accounts because
of some vague “community standard” that each violated. No, Twitter banned them
simply because it is possible that the election audits going on in these
states might actually uncover evidence of election fraud, and to allow honest
and real news reporting can no longer be allowed, if that reporting might
threaten the dominate leftist agenda and the Democratic Party politicians who
are imposing it.
In an Instapundit item
below, John Tierney
links to a City Journal
article
that frames up “Big Tech Censorship” as the the most “controversial” problem
with Section 230, which provides immunity to “internet service providers” for
content ostensibly created by third parties.
While I agree that the
censorship problem has to be solved by either a judicial ruling that declares
the web a “public space” or a re-write of the statute, I think the real
problem is that the more common problem is an overly broad statute that allows
virtual newsrooms to defame with impunity. The statute was passed in part to
protect companies like AOL and CompuServe for content they didn’t create,
particularly, kiddie porn.
I'm pretty simple, they can either censor, or the can have protection, not
both.
Katie Benner (pictured left) used to write freelance for the Beijing
Review, China’s only National news magazine in English, published by the
Chinese Communist Party-owned China International Publishing Group.
"... with people the general considered loyal mediocrities, General Milley got nervous. 'They may try,' but they would not succeed with any kind of plot, he told his aides, according to the book. 'You can’t do this without the military,' he went on. 'You can’t do this without the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. We’re the guys with the guns.' While some might greet such comments with relief, General Milley’s musings should give us pause. Americans have not usually looked to the military for help in regulating their civilian politics. And there is something grandiose about General Milley’s conception of his place in government. He told aides that a 'retired military buddy' had called him on election night to say, 'You represent the stability of this republic.' If there was not a coup underway, then General Milley’s comments may be cause more for worry than for relief. Were we really that close to a coup?... It was, instead, mayhem on behalf of what had started as a legitimate political position....
U.S. Army Major General Patrick Donahoe became a celebrity Tuesday night after Fox News’ Tucker Carlson did a piece on him picking fights on Twitter over the COVID vaccine. “Hillsdale, come get your boy” he tweeted in response to a Ph.D. student there.
