Two Days in Murphy's Above and Below Ground

Georgia's sister Mary and her husband John, who we went to Italy with, drove down from thier house in Mad River yesterday morning, and arrived around lunch. We ran into town for lunch, and found the Murphys Pokey.

We found lunch at one of Murphys cheaper establishments, Firewood, which proved perfectly adequate.

From there, we headed to Kautz Ironstone Vineyard and Winery, to look at the famous 44 lb crystalline gold nugget on display there.

A magnificent specimen, well worth the short drive. However we passed up the tasting room and headed back to Murphys to Hatcher's tasting room, where John and I enjoyed a protracted tasting under the tutelage of Sewell Hatcher.

This afternoon, with the temperature reaching 100 F in the shade, we had another lunch at Firewood, and over John's slight misgivings, headed up Sheep Ranch Road to Mercer Caverns, to enjoy a tour of the cavern in the cool and dark.

Our intrepid tour leader warning us of the 440 steps 16 stories underground, beside the entrance to the cave system.

The caverns were discovered by a gold prospector back during the gold rush era, and even then was quickly developed into a tourist site, with Mercer charging a pinch of gold for a 5 hour candlelit tour by ropes and ladders. His career was ended by a 300 ft fall, which he survived, but never recovered from.

The first and biggest chamber. Opened up by an enormous rock fall, the cavern has been molded by flowing water, and flowstone deposits for millions of years.

Compared to other caverns I have visited, Mercer was a more intimate experience, with many tight passages requiring stooping, or limbo-ing down steep steps. There were only about 10 people in the group, so it was also fairly intimate from that aspect as well.

The stone formations weren't, for the most part as big or as well developed as say, Luray Caverns, or the Oregon Caves, but there were a rather nice variety, and as I said, they were very close at hand (but no touch!).

Did I mention it was a nice cool 55 F in the caves?

Sauce for the Goose . . .

is sauce for the gander. An article in the government funded "Bay Journal" in which a government funded journalist decries the private funding of science: Industry-influenced research: a new level of caveat emptor

There is a price to pay, it turns out, for our lush and weed-free lawns and gardens. For example, lawn fertilizers are no different than animal waste in terms of the surfeit of nitrogen and phosphorus they add to stormwater runoff. They contribute to the same problems of algae growth in the Bay as do runoff from chicken plants and cattle standing in streams.

But there is an even darker aspect of this, concerning the flow of information about the chemicals we apply to our environs. Americans can generally be trusted to make sound decisions about their environment and their health if they are given accurate information. Which perhaps explains why the chemical industry is so eager to skew that informational flow.

In mid-March, the New York Times reported the story of unsealed court documents showing how Monsanto has tried to steer public knowledge about glyphosate, the main ingredient in the popular (and effective) weed killer Roundup.

There is suspicion that this ingredient causes cancer, although there’s no certainty on this point. The court documents unsealed by San Francisco Judge Vince Chhabria involve a lawsuit brought by people who have developed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and claim it is the result of exposure to glyphosate.

The most eye-opening line in the story is this: “In one [unsealed email] William F. Heydens, a Monsanto executive, told other company officials that they could ghostwrite research on glyphosate by hiring academics to put their names on papers that were actually written by Monsanto.”

Monsanto insists there’s nothing to it, but the documents support a Times investigation late last year that called into question the validity of industry funded research, where legitimate scientists are commandeered by global chemical industries: “Scientists deliver outcomes favorable to companies, while university research departments court corporate support,” the Times wrote. “Universities and regulators sacrifice full autonomy by signing confidentiality agreements. And academics sometimes double as paid consultants.”

I wonder if the author might extend the same curiosity to the global warming/climate change community, where funding is dominated by the federal government.

University researchers are given $250-an-hour consulting jobs by industry, and then produce studies whose findings are, wouldn’t you know, remarkably in accordance with industries’ position that their products and practices are all safe as can be. The industries then point to these studies as proof that their products are harmless to people and the environment — neglecting to mention that they essentially paid for the favorable results themselves.

No mention of the fact here that much of the research on pesticides and  pharmaceuticals will not, and cannot be funded by government. It's simply not in the governments wheelhouse to prove that these products are safe and effective.

This practice is not new and not limited to chemicals. The University of California-Davis, for example, noted that “tobacco companies funded epidemiological and biological research that was designed to support claims that secondhand smoke [caused] little or no harm.” These industry studies, UC Davis says, are often laundered through peer-reviewed scientific journals to give them an aura of legitimacy, when in fact industry reps are sitting on the boards of these publications.

The US is reaching a watershed moment where a majority of the funding for research comes from non-federal sources, for the first time in my lifetime. Never fear, though, a substantial amount of the nonfederal funding is generated by federal demands for information that they have no interest in funding,  more is funded by liberal environmental NGOs.

Tangier Island Gets Hate Mail

"You voted for Donald f***** Trump haha oh god I hope your whole f***** island sinks."

from Mayor of disappearing island: "We just need the help to come now"

California Continues to Go to the Wolves

Another pack of gray wolves spotted in California

A female gray wolf, her mate and at least three pups are the second pack of wolves spotted in Northern California since the species went extinct in 1924, state wildlife officials said Wednesday.

The gray pups were born this spring in Lassen National Forest to a female wolf of unknown origins. Her mate is the son of OR7, a wolf with a tracking device that was the first of its kind in almost a century to migrate into California from Oregon, the Department of Fish and Wildlife said.

Biologists began surveying the Lassen National Forest area in May after they found evidence of wolf presence.

On June 30, they captured the 75-pound female gray wolf and fitted her with a tracking collar. An examination revealed she had recently given birth to pups.

A day later, Department of Fish and Wildlife biologists returned to the area for a follow-up check on the female and found that a nearby trail camera operated by the United States Forest Service had captured photos of the mother and pups. The gray pups were also photographed playing in front of the camera.

Cool!

Reason #5600 That Trump Was Elected

Central Americans, “Scared Of What’s Happening” In U.S., Stay Put

Many in the Central American countries known as the Northern Triangle — El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras — appear to be doing just that. Those nations have accounted for many of the undocumented immigrants who have tried to cross the American border in recent years. Now the wariness about Mr. Trump’s immigration policies is palpable, the impact visible.

Migrant smugglers in Honduras say their business has dried up since Mr. Trump took office. Fewer buses have been leaving the northern Honduran city of San Pedro Sula bound for the border with Guatemala, the usual route for Honduran migrants heading overland to the United States. In hotels and shelters along the migrant trail, once-occupied beds go empty night after night.

Marcos, a migrant smuggler based near San Pedro Sula, said that last year he had taken one or two groups each month from Honduras to the United States border. Since Mr. Trump’s inauguration, however, he has had only one client. He blames Mr. Trump.

From February through May, the number of undocumented immigrants stopped or caught along the southwest border of the United States fell 60 percent from the same period last year, according to United States Customs and Border Protection — evidence that far fewer migrants are heading north, officials on both sides of the border say.

Mexicans Attempt to Enforce Immigration Law on Bunnies

Playboy, that is. Distraught Playboy Bunnies jailed in Mexico, ‘begged for food and water’

Three Playboy Playmates were detained by Mexican police officers on June 30 at a party for Playboy Music Fest in Merida, Mexico.

Turkish model Elif Celik, American model Lauryn Elaine, and French model Marie Brethenoux were taken into custody because Mexican authorities believed they were working at the event, but only had tourist travel visas.

"We came to Mexico to celebrate each other's company and to gain publicity with our fans by coming to these parties in Meridá and Cancun," Elaine told Fox News in an email. "Around midnight, immigration came and busted into our party when all of us girls were sitting at our VIP tables enjoying champagne and music. They then rounded us up into a large room and weeded us all out by checking everyone's IDs."

"They just arrested us while we were enjoying the party and then after a while the cops just came in and asked for passports," Celik said. "It was a horrible moment in my life that I have never had before.”

Elaine said they were loaded into a van and taken in for questioning. Afterwards, the models were put "in a holding cell cage for almost 24 hours, and we had to beg for food and water."

"Luckily our Playboy Mexico family was extremely quick on taking action," she shared.

Playboy Mexico described the incident in a press release as a "misunderstanding."

"There was an abuse of authority from immigration of Merida and federal police” toward some of the talent that they invited to the event, the magazine stated.

Pretty sure that was a simple shakedown.

Wombat-socho chimes in with "Rule 5 Sunday: (Snap-On) Tool Time."

Snakehead Invasion Reaches Lake Anna

Some good eaten' there!

Invasive northern snakehead caught in Lake Anna

On the morning of May 29, angler Colby Horne landed what appeared to be a northern snakehead from a dock on the upper arm of Lake Anna near Gold Mine Creek. Uncertain of the fish’s identity, Horne and his father snapped a photo of the catch and released the fish back into the lake..

The photo quickly began to circulate and was soon confirmed as an invasive northern snakehead, a fish native to the Yangtze River basin in China. They were first discovered in Virginia waters in the Potomac River in 2004, quickly following word of the region’s first invasive population in a pond in Crofton, Md., in 2002.

Biologists studying the Maryland invasion learned that introduced snakeheads can reproduce rapidly. Thus, after the fish began to populate the Potomac River, they quickly spread out to cover all of its tidal reaches — from Great Falls downstream to the Chesapeake Bay. In 2012, it became apparent that the fish are capable of using freshets — surges of freshwater pushing into saltwater as a result of heavy flooding — to move along the Virginia coast when they turned up in small numbers in the Tidal Rappahannock River below Fredericksburg.

Horne’s photo from Lake Anna represents the first snakehead capture by an angler in the York River watershed, but is hardly the first suggestion of their presence in the lake.

“A woman took a photograph of a snakehead in upper Contrary creek last year adjacent to a dock in a bed of Hydrilla,” said John Odenkirk, a Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries (VDGIF) Regional Fisheries biologist and snakehead project leader. “She stated that the fish in the picture was with another adult and that there was a school of small fish nearby. We sampled the area and found two of last year’s fish, which were probably among the school of young she saw.”

Odenkirk believes that the fish were illegally introduced to the lake. “A viable population will persist — and grow — but current abundance is very low,” he said.

It now seems inevitable that the Northern Snakehead will reach every body of water in the Bay watershed with suitable habitat (and they're fairly forgiving). Fortunately it doesn't seem to be the ecological disaster that some predicted.

DNC Still Withholding Evidence in Supposed Russian Hack

Hacked computer server that handled DNC email remains out of reach of Russia investigators

It is perhaps the key piece of forensic evidence in Russia’s suspected efforts to sway the November presidential election, but federal investigators have yet to get their hands on the hacked computer server that handled email from the Democratic National Committee.

Indeed, the only cybersecurity specialists who have taken a look at the server are from CrowdStrike, the Irvine, California-based private cybersecurity company that the DNC hired to investigate the hack — but which has come under fire itself for its work.

Some critics say CrowdStrike’s evidence for blaming Russia for the hack is thin. Members of Congress say they still believe Russia was responsible but wonder why the DNC has never allowed federal investigators to get a look at the key piece of evidence: the server. Either way, a key “witness” in the political scandal consuming the Trump administration remains beyond the reach of investigators.

Gee, I wonder why they continue to withhold this vital evidence? Maybe they know it will contradict the "Russia did it" meme they've been trying to promulgate.Or maybe they just have something else illegal to hide.

Reason #5599 That Trump Was Elected

CNN, again. As you may be aware, a early one morning few days ago a bored President Trump tweeted out an animated gif showing  him in an actual WWE wrestling match putting a headlock on an opponent, whose head had been crudely replaced with a CNN logo. As intended, the media reaction was furious, accusing him of inciting cartoon violence against reporters, instead of, say, the actual violence that reporters incited against Steve Scalise.

CNN was so upset, they actually tracked down the person (either a 15 year old or a middle age man acting as a 15 year old depending on who you believe) who posted it to Reddit, and threatened to reveal his secret identity if he didn't apologize, and threatened to do it if he committed any additional thought crimes. Shocking CNN threat aimed at a private citizen.

This is Andrew Kaczynski at CNN, who doesn't seem to have any idea how bad this is:

CNN is not publishing "HanA**holeSolo's" name because he is a private citizen who has issued an extensive statement of apology, showed his remorse by saying he has taken down all his offending posts, and because he said he is not going to repeat this ugly behavior on social media again. In addition, he said his statement could serve as an example to others not to do the same.
CNN reserves the right to publish his identity should any of that change....

So the human being behind the ridiculous pseudonym HanA**holeSolo should cringe for the rest of his life and never publish anything that CNN could possibly deem "bigoted" or "racist" because it would trigger CNN's delusional duty to destroy him.

Absolutely despicable.

According to Ted Cruz CNN May Have Broken The Law With Doxxing Threat. Roger Kimball:Trump Provokes CNN’s Self-Immolation, America Relieved. The Daily Caller reports that CNN staff don't appreciate the shoe being jammed onto the other foot: CNN Staff Reeling After Personal Info Leaked. Don Surber think the Press worries we are catching on.


Ever so much more serious, Ace posted this tweet:

Let the fun begin! Look what I made. LONG LIVE THE MEMES! #CNNisISIS #CNNBlackmail pic.twitter.com/bxEfhUY1Zx

— HillaryClinton.net👌 (@HCDotNet) July 5, 2017

And by way of Wombat-socho's "In The Mailbox: 07.05.17", Twitchy provides Don’t Doxx Us Bro! Top Ten Trump v. CNN GIFs From #CNNBlackmail

Kono Kicks Five-0 Ass

The Asian stars of 'Hawaii Five-0' quit the show after CBS refused to pay them as much as their white costars

"Hawaii Five-0" stars Daniel Dae Kim and Grace Park have left the CBS show after the network refused to pay them as much as their white costars, Variety reports.

Sources told the outlet that Kim and Park were seeking salaries equal to those of stars Alex O'Loughlin and Scott Caan, but they were unable to reach a deal with the show's producer, CBS Television Studios.

As Instapudnit asks, Why are CBS and Hollywood such a hot beds of racism and exploitation?

CBS's final offer to the two actors was reportedly "10-15% lower" than the salaries of their two white costars.

A representative for the network told Variety in a statement: "We are so appreciative of Daniel and Grace's enormous talents, professional excellence, and the aloha spirit they brought to each and every one of our 168 episodes. They've helped us build an exciting new Hawaii Five-0, and we wish them all the best and much success in their next chapters. Mahalo and a hui hou."

I just love it when the 98 lb Kono kicks the butt of some 250 lb ex-SEAL. She was a pretty nice Cylon, too. Well, there goes my last reason for watching Hawaii Five-0. Wombat-socho chimes in with "Rule 5 Sunday: (Snap-On) Tool Time."

The Unsustainability of Sustainable Energy

Monumental, Unsustainable Environmental Impacts

. . . The back-of-the-envelope calculations that follow provide a template. I cannot vouch for any of them. But our governments need to conduct full-blown studies forthwith – before they commit us to spending tens of trillions of dollars on renewable energy schemes, mandates and subsidies that could blanket continents with wind turbines, solar panels, biofuel crops and battery arrays; destroy habitats and wildlife; kill jobs, impoverish families and bankrupt economies; impair our livelihoods, living standards and liberties; and put our lives under the control of unelected, unaccountable state, federal and international rulers – without having a clue whether these supposed alternatives are remotely economical or sustainable.

Ethanol derived from corn grown on 40,000,000 acres now provides the equivalent of 10% of US gasoline – and requires billions of gallons of water, and enormous quantities of fertilizer and energy. What would it take to replace 100% of US gasoline? To replace the entire world’s motor fuels?

Solar panels on Nevada’s Nellis Air Force Base generate 15 megawatts of electricity perhaps 30% of the year from 140 acres. Arizona’s Palo Verde nuclear power plant generates 900 times more electricity, from less land, some 95% of the year. Generating Palo Verde’s output via Nellis technology would require land area ten times larger than Washington, DC – and would still provide electricity unpredictably only 30% of the time. Now run those solar numbers for the 3.5 billion megawatt-hours generated nationwide in 2016.

Modern coal or gas-fired power plants use less than 300 acres to generate 600 megawatts 95% of the time. Indiana’s 600-MW Fowler Ridge wind farm covers 50,000 acres and generates electricity about 30% of the year. Calculate the turbine and acreage requirements for 3.5 billion MWH of wind electricity.

Delving more deeply, generating 20% of US electricity with wind power would require up to 185,000 1.5-MW turbines, 19,000 miles of new transmission lines, 18 million acres, and 245 million tons of concrete, steel, copper, fiberglass and rare earths – plus fossil-fuel back-up generators for the 75-80% of the year that winds nationwide are barely blowing and the turbines are not producing electricity.

Energy analyst David Wells has calculated that replacing 160,000 teraWatt-hours of total global energy consumption with wind would require 183,400,000 turbines needing roughly: 461,000,000,000 tons of steel for the towers; 460,00,000,000 tons of steel and concrete for the foundations; 59,000,000,000 tons of copper, steel and alloys for the turbines; 738,000,000 tons of neodymium for turbine magnets; 14,700,000,000 tons of steel and complex composite materials for the nacelles; 11,000,000,000 tons of complex petroleum-based composites for the rotors; and massive quantities of other raw materials – all of which must be mined, processed, manufacturedinto finished products and shipped around the world.

Assuming 25 acres per turbine, the turbines would require 4,585,000,000 acres (1,855,500,000 hectares) – 1.3 times the land area of North America! Wells adds: Shipping just the iron ore to build the turbines would require nearly 3 million voyages in huge ships that would consume 13 billion tons of bunker fuel (heavy oil) in the process. And converting that ore to iron and steel would require 473 billion tons of coking coal, demanding another 1.2 million sea voyages, consuming another 6 billion tons of bunker fuel.

For sustainability disciples: Does Earth have enough of these raw materials for this transformation?

It gets worse. These numbers do not include the ultra-long transmission lines required to carry electricity from windy locations to distant cities. Moreover, Irina Slav notes, wind turbines, solar panels and solar thermal installations cannot produce high enough heat to melt silica, iron or other metals, and certainly cannot generate the required power on a reliable enough basis to operate smelters and factories.

Wind turbines (and solar panels) last just 20 years or so (less in salt water environments) – while coal, gas and nuclear power plants last 35-50 years and require far less land and raw materials. That means we would have tear down, haul away and replace far more “renewable” generators twice as often; dispose of or recycle their component parts (and toxic or radioactive wastes); and mine, process and ship more ores.

Finally, their intermittent electricity output means they couldn’t guarantee you could boil an egg, run an assembly line, surf the internet or complete a heart transplant when you need to. So we store their output in massive battery arrays, you say. OK. Let’s calculate the land, energy and raw materials for that. While we’re at it, let’s add in the requirements for building and recharging 100% electric vehicle fleets.

First, we'd need batteries or other energy storage media that would be up to the task. But talking about it makes you feel virtuous, so there is that.

Murphys Butterflies

Not a lot going on today, but I did get out to check out the butterflies visiting Dad's Butterfly Bush.  Here is a nice Painted Lady. I had been hoping for a West Coast Lady, but even this is new for the year, as I have not seen anything but American Ladies at home. In that bush the pattern is almost camouflage. Maybe tomorrow.

This is my greatest puzzle. It's either a Funereal or a Mournful Duskywing, from the wide white fringe on the end of the wing, but the descriptions don't do much to distinguish them. I'll send photos to BOMA for ID, but if it's like last year they won't be able to tell either. Maybe I've got both.

The most common is a Fiery Skipper. There are usually several males fighting over the perfect perch to watch for the ladies. Alas, there are no ladies.

An Orange Sulphur, which I might have called a Clouded Sulphur, except that they are not supposed to occur here. I also had a frustrating enounter with either a California Sister or A Lorquin's Admiral, who stopped briefly, but not long enough to photograph, or even tell the difference.

More Dam News from the Chesapeake

A dam could derail the Chesapeake Bay cleanup

For nearly seven years since the cleanup started, the federal government and six states in the bay’s watershed have reduced municipal sewer overflows that pour nitrogen and phosphorus into rivers that feed into the bay, and cut the fertilizers and other nutrients that run off from hundreds of farms. They also counted on the Conowingo Dam to block massive amounts of sediment in the Susquehanna River from smothering bay grasses that nurture marine life.

But that part of the plan has gone very wrong.

According to a report being prepared by scientists who work for the Environmental Protection Agency program that manages the bay cleanup, the reservoir behind the hydroelectric dam, which sits at the top of the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland, near the Pennsylvania border, has filled with sediment far sooner than the agency had predicted.

Using technology that didn’t exist when the original calculation was made, the scientists said they have determined that the original estimate of when the reservoir would fill was off by more than 15 years. Rather than reaching capacity in 2030 to 2035, it is already 95 percent full and could cease protecting the bay from sediment within the next three years. As Johns Hopkins University professor William P. Ball said, “It’s like the dam is not even there.”

This story seems pretty wrong to me. First, the "cleanup" of the Bay has been going on a lot longer than 7 years. It's been in progress (with more or less, mostly less, results) since we arrived in 1985. The new pact 7 years ago was only one of several agreements.

I also distinctly remember the head of the EPA Chesapeake Bay Program back then tell scientists assembled at a conference that in his opinion, the filling of Conowingo Dam was the greatest challenge facing the Bay, because in 30 years it would be full, and the sediment that it trapped would start to spill into the Bay again. That would appear to be right on schedule.

As I've noted repeatedly in the past, proponents of  the Chesapeake Bay should thank the industry that made the dam that protected the Bay for almost 100 years, instead of trying to hold it responsible for failing on their watch. The current anti-industrial regulatory environment will make it nearly impossible to repeat that stroke of luck.

Reason #5598 That Trump Was Elected

President Trump Issues Executive Order on Reviving the National Space Council

On Friday, President Donald J. Trump issued an Executive Order to revive the National Space Council.

President George H.W. Bush established the National Space Council in 1989. The Council was tasked with advising and assisting the President regarding national space policy and strategy. The Council ceased operation in 1993. This Executive Order revives the Council and will reinvigorate America’s role as a leader in space, strengthen America’s economy, and advance the security of the American people.

Bill Cinton dropped the Space Council to focus on the poor. It must have worked since there are no more poor people in America.

Too Big? Impossible!

Emily Ratajkowski claims her big breasts mean she is discriminated against and prevented from landing acting jobs

Emily Ratajkowski, the model and actress, has claimed she is discriminated against because her large breasts have prevented her from landing jobs.

The 26-year-old, who rose to fame for her role in Robin Thicke's controversial video for the song Blurred Lines, told Harper's Bazaar Australia: "There's this thing that happens to me: 'Oh, she's too sexy.'

"It's like an anti-woman thing, that people don't want to work with me because my boobs are too big."

She continued: "What's wrong with boobs? They're a beautiful, feminine thing that needs to be celebrated.

"Like, who cares? They are great big, they are great small. Why should that be an issue?"

I don't think so, but maybe we should look again:

Happy Brexit I Day!

Some neighborhood fireworks to celebrate our independence from Britain:

The Weed du Jour

Eschscholzia californica (California poppy, Californian poppy, golden poppy, California sunlight, cup of gold) is a species of flowering plant in the Papaveraceae family, native to the United States and Mexico. It is an ornamental plant and it is used medicinally and in cooking, and it became the official state flower of California in 1903

It is a perennial or annual plant growing to 5–60 in (13–152 cm) tall with alternately branching glaucous blue-green foliage. The leaves are alternately divided into round, lobed segments. The flowers are solitary on long stems, silky-textured, with four petals, each petal 2 to 6 cm (0.79 to 2.36 in) long and broad; flower color ranges through yellow, orange and red  (with some pinks), with flowering from February to September in the northern hemisphere (spring, summer, autumn). The petals close at night (or in cold, windy weather) and open again the following morning, although they may remain closed in cloudy weather. The fruit is a slender, dehiscent capsule 3 to 9 cm (1.2 to 3.5 in) long, which splits in two to release numerous small black or dark brown seeds. It survives mild winters in its native range, dying completely in colder climates.

Its native habitat includes California and extends to Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Sonora and northwest Baja California.[4] The Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve is located in northern Los Angeles County. At the peak of the blooming season, orange flowers seem to cover all 1,745 acres (706 ha) of the reserve. Other prominent locations of California poppy meadows are in Bear Valley (Colusa County) and Point Buchon (San Luis Obispo County).

It's quite common here in Murphys, growing up in empty lots and along road edges, where most of the grass has already gone to seed and turned brown.

Reason #5597 That Trump Was Elected

Trump's Leaner White House Payroll Projected To Save Taxpayers $22 Million

If the White House payroll is a leading indicator of the president’s commitment to shrink government then voters have a reason to cheer. Projected four-year savings on the White House payroll could top $22 million. Savings come from President Trump’s refusal to take a salary as well as big reductions in other areas including the absence of czars, expensive “fellowships,” and spending on FLOTUS staff.

On Friday, the Trump administration released their annual report to Congress on White House Office Personnel. It includes the name, status, salary and position title of all 377 White House employees. (Search the recent Trump administration payroll data – and last two-years of the Obama administration - posted at OpenTheBooks.com.)

Here are some key findings:

• There are 110 fewer employees on White House staff under Trump than under Obama at this point in their respective presidencies.
• $5.1 million in payroll savings vs. the Obama FY2015 payroll. In 2017, the Trump payroll amounts to $35.8 million for 377 employees, while the Obama payroll amounted to $40.9 million for 476 employees (FY2015).
• Nineteen fewer staffers are dedicated to The First Lady of the United States (FLOTUS). Currently, there are five staffers dedicated to Melania Trump vs. 24 staffers who served Michelle Obama (FY2009).
• Counts of the “Assistants to the President” – the most trusted advisors to the president - are the same (22) in both first-year Trump and Obama administrations. In the Trump White House, Steven Bannon, Kellyanne Conway, Omarosa Manigault, Reince Priebus, Sean Spicer and 17 others make salaries of $179,700. In Obama’s first-year, David Axelrod, Rahm Emanuel and twenty others held the title with top pay of $172,000.
• The highest compensated White House Trump staffer? Mark House, Senior Policy Advisor, has a salary of $187,500. Mr. House is “on detail” from a federal agency which allows him to exceed the top pay-grade of $179,700. In Obama’s Administration (2009), David Marcozzi earned $193,000 “on detail” from Health and Human Services.

 And Ivanka comes free!

Our review of the Trump White House payroll confirms five staffers dedicated to First Lady Melania Trump. Highly criticized for her twenty-four assistants, advisors, schedulers, directors, deputies, advance aides, associates, social and press secretaries and other helpers, former First Lady Michelle Obama’s staff was only slightly larger than Laura Bush’s staff of eighteen.

$22 Million isn't a ton of money in Washington D.C, 4-5 standard boondoggles, but to actually be using less rather than more is a start.

Wombat-socho chimes in with "Rule 5 Sunday: (Snap-On) Tool Time."

Why Not Flopper Stopper?

That would be my name for this product:



Thanks to Mark, who encountered this at work.

Wombat-socho chimes in with "Rule 5 Sunday: (Snap-On) Tool Time."

Monday in Murphys

We're currently visiting Murphys, California, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, where ny father, brother Ted, and his family live. I walked down town for a cup of iced coffee late yesterday afternoon with my other brother.

John and Daniel Murphy were part of the Stephens-Townsend-Murphy Party, the first immigrant party to bring wagons across the Sierra Nevada to Sutter's Fort in 1844. They earned a living as merchants, but like many others, began prospecting when the California Gold Rush began. They first started in Vallecito, which was known as "Murphys Old Diggings," before moving to another location in 1848 which became "Murphys New Diggings," "Murphy's Camp," and eventually just "Murphys."

The placer mining in this location was wildly successful. Miners were limited to claims of 8 square feet (0.75 m2) and yet many were still able to become rich. The Murphy brothers themselves, however, made far more money as merchants than as miners. In fact, John was so successful that he left town at the end of 1849 and never returned, having amassed a personal fortune of nearly $2 million. Roughly $20 million in gold was discovered in Murphys and the surrounding area. Two of the richest diggings were named Owlsburg and Owlburrow Flat.

Now, with the gold largely played out, Murphys is a small tourist Mecca, on route to Big Tree State Park, Bear Valley Ski Resort, and not too far from Yosemite National Park, by California driving standards. Trees provide shade in the 90 degree summer days, and there are plenty of places to eat and drink along the main drag.

Wine has become a big business in the area; I am informed by Mark that 17 wineries have sprung up where there were only 2 a few years ago.

Reason #5596 That Trump Was Elected

Fighters in Syria cheer at mention of Trump name

“One Syrian Kurdish commander used a vulgar term, in Spanish it would be cojones, to describe what President Trump has got and why they like him.”

On a morning when you would have expected the Morning Joe panel to be all about Trump’s CNN wrestling tweet, a Washington Post editor/columnist painted an amazingly positive portrait of the president’s actions in Syria.

WaPo’s David Ignatius has just returned from a week in Syria. He was almost apologetic in prefacing his remarks: “I’m going to say something that in some ways is sympathetic to Trump.”

He then proceeded to say that he was told by top US commanders that “the most daring and decisive” attack in the battle of Raqqa would not have happened if it hadn’t been for President Trump’s decision to delegate authority to commanders in the field.

Ignatius’ contrasting depiction of the Obama administration was incredibly damning: “under Obama, that would have taken a couple of weeks of White House meetings and they still wouldn’t have made up their mind.”

No one ever accused Preznit Obama of having cojones.

Way to Pick 'Em!

Czech power plant apologizes for using bikini photos to choose interns

A nuclear power plant in the Czech Republic apologized for asking Facebook users to help choose interns from a pool of bikini-clad candidates.

A since-deleted Facebook post by CEZ's Temelin station included photos of 10 recent high school graduates wearing bikinis and hard hats and asked visitors to the social media page to help choose "Miss Energy 2017," who would be awarded a two-week internship with the company.'

 Bill Clinton would be impressed.

"We think photographs are very tasteful," CNN quoted the deleted post as saying. "The combination of beauty and the industrial environment gives an interesting result."

The post resulted in a flood of criticism from Facebook users who decried the competition as sexist and unprofessional.

The company apologized in a Facebook post two days later, saying all 10 women would be offered internships.

"The purpose of the competition was to promote technical education," the post said. "But if the original vision raised doubts or concerns, we are very sorry."

It's cultural appropriation to criticize how the Czecks pick their interns.

Wombat-socho chimes in with "Rule 5 Sunday: (Snap-On) Tool Time."

Travel News, Reviews, Bug sightings and bug free zones has more:

Gone to California

Went to California yesterday. Left Maryland around 3 PM local time, and arrived in Sacramento about 5:30 local. Made it to Murphys befor 9 PM.

Some pictures from the crossing.

Dry land agriculture with circular irrigation in the Great Basin.

The Sierras still have lots of snow.

California's Central Valley,

I'm puzzled

Rice fields near Sacramento

The Sacramento River.

Good Morning!

How about some some Nina Agdal in the skimpiest bikini ever to start the day?



Linked at Pirates Cove in the weekly "Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup" and links. Wombat-socho chimes in with "Rule 5 Sunday: (Snap-On) Tool Time."

Cocaine is for Horses, Not for Dogs

12 greyhounds test positive for cocaine at Bestbet race track

According to records obtained by First Coast News, the dogs, all racers at Bestbet Orange Park, tested positive for Benzoylecgonine (BZE) -- a metabolite of cocaine.

"This is the largest greyhound drug case in American history," says Carey Theil, Executive Director of GREY2K USA in Arlington, Mass., a non-profit that opposes greyhound racing and monitors dog tracks around the country. "This is staggering."

First Coast News obtained records from the state Department of Business and Professional Regulation. They show at least 12 dogs in the care of trainer Charles McClellan tested positive for cocaine, for a total of 18 cases in 4 months. The state requires the winner of each greyhound race, as well as another randomly chosen dog, to be drug tested after races. Urine tests conducted by the University of Florida College on Medicine Racing Laboratory came back positive for BZE. McClellan is cited for a Class 1 drug violation for each positive test.

Bestbet officials declined requests for an interview. Through spokesperson Michael Munz, the track released this statement:

“Bestbet Orange Park completely supports the swift action taken by the state in this matter and as always, fully cooperated with state officials as they conducted their random and routine tests. Bestbet Orange Park maintains a zero-tolerance policy for any trainer or staff member that does anything which puts one of the dog’s health at risk. In this instance, the process carried out by the state of Florida and the regulators was carefully followed under state law. The bottom line is, the system worked.”

It might help in a sprint, but I'll bet you don't find it in dogs on the Iditarod.

Cocaine's for horses and it's not for men

Doctor said it kill you, but he didn't say when

Reason #5590-5595 That Trump Was Elected

Neil Gorsuch: WaPo Review Of Gorsuch Is Glowing, Even If They Didn’t Mean It To Be

Robert Barnes, writing at the Washington Post, published an early review of the performance of Supreme Court Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch (six words which I swear to you I will never get tired of writing) this week. As with many reviews from the WaPo of people or ideas which lean in a conservative direction, one almost detects a hint of criticism, or at least disappointment hiding under the covers.

On Day 78 of his lifetime appointment, the Supreme Court’s newest justice, Neil M. Gorsuch, revealed himself Monday to be:
● Skeptical about the reach of the court’s two-year-old decision granting same-sex couples the right to marry.
●Further to the right than almost all of his colleagues on gun rights.
●Unwilling to lend his full support to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.’s opinion in a major separation-of-church-and-state case, because of disagreement over a two-sentence footnote.

While it’s not a direction I would take personally, I can assure you that a lot of people who voted for Trump primarily, if not entirely for the purpose of having him select the next member of the highest court in the land rather than Hillary Clinton, were not at all bothered by his apparent take on gay marriage. If he’s “further to the right” than most of the court on Second Amendment rights, the aforementioned voters are currently popping open champagne bottles. And if anyone is bothered by the fact that he would strike out with his own thoughts when he disagrees with another justice’s footnotes, they should probably go back to watching Dancing With the Stars. We want justices who think independently and inject their own opinions into the debate. We don’t need sheep. And I say that even for the ones who I almost always disagree with.

Boom! SCOTUS Reinstates Travel Ban (Mostly), Will Hear Case In Fall

Originally slated to take effect shortly after Trump’s inauguration, two versions of the order have been put forward and then summarily halted by both the Fourth and Ninth Circuit Courts of Appeals. SCOTUS found at least five members (and I’m sure you can guess which ones) to disagree with the lower courts and have largely reinstated the ban while agreeing to hear the case in full this fall.

The justices agreed they preferred separation of powers to judicial fiat.

FASTER, PLEASE: Islamic State Is Near Defeat in Iraq, Prime Minister Says.

“We are seeing the end of the fake Daesh state,” Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said on Twitter, using another name for Islamic State. “The liberation of Mosul proves that. We will not relent,” he added.
Thursday’s recapture of the ruined Nouri mosque came a week after Islamic State blew it up as Iraqi forces closed in, reducing to rubble the 12th-century building and its 150-foot minaret. The mosque gained notoriety when Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi spoke there three years ago and declared himself the head of a caliphate, or religious empire.
Col. Ryan Dillon, the Baghdad-based spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition battling Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, said that Iraqi forces on Thursday cut a wedge in the middle of the area held by Islamic State, seizing the Nouri mosque and cornering the few hundred remaining fighters in half of Mosul’s Old City on one side, and an area around a hospital that has been a stronghold for the group on the other side.

And rather than simply drive ISIS fighters out and into their next stronghold — the practice of the previous Administration — U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis has a plan to kill them all.

 Trump Administration Signals End To Campus Star Chambers

At a National Association of College and University Attorneys conference in Chicago this week, acting assistant secretary of OCR, Candice Jackson, said the Trump administration would take a less confrontational approach to the way the department handles accusations that schools do not properly address sexual assault complaints.

“OCR has fallen into a pattern and practice of overreaching, of setting out to punish and embarrass institutions rather than appreciate their good faith and genuine desire to correct legitimate civil rights problems,” Jackson told the crowd.
. . .
Jackson would not, however, commit to removing the low standard of proof the Obama administration had required. The preponderance of evidence standard was forced onto schools for dubious reasons: the Obama administration claimed OCR was justified in using this standard because many schools already used it, even though that is not a legal justification. The standard means schools just have to be 50.01 percent sure an accuser is telling the truth.

Flip a coin. And no, I'm not yet tired of winning:  Angry White House reporter: 'I can't take it anymore!'

The reporter who lashed out at the Trump administration on Tuesday said Wednesday that reporters have to stand up and fight President Trump's effort to dismiss the media, and said he blew up at spokeswoman Sarah Sanders because he "can't take it anymore."

"For the government to sit there and undermine essentially what [are] very essential checks and balances in the system, it's disheartening, it's unnerving," said reporter Brian Karem, who writes for Playboy, on MSNBC.

"I can't take it anymore," he said.

Karem on Tuesday complained to Sanders that she was purposefully saying "inflammatory" things to make the media look bad, and to say anything the press writes against Trump amounts to fake news.

On MSNBC, Karem complained that Sanders' mission on Tuesday was to berate the press, even though the first three questions Sanders was asked dealt with media, including Karem's complaint.

Playboy has a White House correspondent? Can we at least get Pamela Anderson?

Linked at Pirates Cove in the weekly "Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup" and links.

Rule 5 Saturday - California Girl, Marisa Miller

 This week's Rule 5 lovely is Marisa Miller:

Miller was born as Marisa Lee Bertetta in Santa Cruz, California, to Krista (née Useldinger) and Marc Bertetta. . . She considered herself a tomboy growing up, with mostly male friends and little awareness of anything girly. Out of shyness, she often wore large t-shirts to hide her body and would get fully dressed just to go to the trash-can while at the beach.

. . . best known for her appearances in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue and her work for Victoria's Secret. After a stint shooting with photographer Mario Testino for fashion magazines such as Vogue, Miller began working for both companies in 2002. In 2007, she became a Victoria's Secret Angel, and graced the cover of the 2008 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue to record-setting numbers. Her accomplishments have led to her being dubbed the "return of the great American supermodel."

Miller was first "discovered" at age sixteen walking through a San Francisco café by two Italian modeling agents. After talking to her mother, she was on a plane to Italy with her mother a few months later, despite her "shy and conservative" personality. Miller gained attention in 1997 when she appeared nude in the first issue of Perfect 10 magazine. Although she came in third behind Ashley Degenford and Monica Hansen in Perfect 10 magazine's first annual model search, she was repeatedly showcased  (NSFW links) in following issues, including the covers of the Winter 1998 and August/September 1999 editions. Unlike most models who begin their careers with nude photo shoots, Marisa was able to make the jump to mainstream modeling as well as a reprint for the Fall 2004 edition cover.

GOODSTUFF wants help holding his beer for GOODSTUFFs BLOGGING MAGAZINE (299th Issue) while he does some pizza pie with Sara Jean Underwood. Also this week, there was plenty of far out space news, international news and udder news that's fit to click. Linked at Pirates Cove in the weekly "Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup" and links. Wombat-socho chimes in with "Late Night With Rule 5 Monday: All-American Catgirl" and "FMJRA 2.0: Painkiller".