Midnite Music - "Nobody to Love"

Wombat-socho has the great "Rule 5 Tuesday – Belated Independence Day Weekend Edition" up at The Other McCain.

Virginia Governor Seeks to Revive Climate Fears

Va. gov revives climate change panel, cites threat

Gov. Terry McAuliffe has resurrected a state climate change panel to come up with ways to blunt the impact of rising seas in highly vulnerable Virginia.

McAuliffe said Tuesday he’s restoring the climate panel, dormant for the past four years, to deal with the “growing threat” of climate change to the state’s coastal communities, among the most threatened in the U.S.

McAuliffe said the state has an opportunity to be a leader in finding creative ways to mitigate climate change.

I just checked my wallet; how about you?

Climate scientists have long warned that rising seas pose a serious threat to the Virginia coast, in part because land is sinking around the Chesapeake Bay from the meteor that gouged out the estuary eons ago. But they’ve complained their warnings have not been heeded.

That's because climate scientists have been warning about a problem that, simply put, isn't getting any worse.  Look at this graph of sea level from Sewell's Point Virginia, which shows absolutely no increase is sea level rise since the beginning of measurements (longer records from Baltimore et al show the same rate of sea level rise since the before the turn of the 20th century

Yes, the sea is rising, and the land in the mid-Atlantic is sinking, as land settles back into the meteor crater, and as we withdraw fresh water from the spongy ground.

One year ago, the Virginia Institute of Marine Science submitted a report to state lawmakers on the consequences of rising seas along the coast. In Hampton Roads, including cities such as Norfolk, flooding is commonplace during major storms and is expected to worsen over the next 20 to 50 years.

The VIMS report anticipates a sea level rise in Virginia of roughly 1.5 feet during that time period.

4.4 mm per year, over a 50 year span yields 8.7 inches of sea level rise.  For their prediction to come to pass, an extreme increase in the rate of sea level rise would have to occur.  Yes, you have paved over salt marshes that would have kept up with sea level rise. But it's unlikely, if even if global warming climate change climate variability continues at its current rate, that any substantial increase in this rate will happen.

The report also says 26 percent of Virginia Beach’s land mass could face flooding over the next 50 years, waterlogging 289 miles of roads in the tourist city.

The report called for the state to coordinate planning efforts, review local governments’ authority to address projected flooding risk and enable them to do so, and determine by urgency areas for flood mitigation, among other measures.

More money needed to be able to give to friendly interest groups.

Obama White House Continues War on Women

Male-female pay gap remains entrenched at White House

The White House has not narrowed the gap between the average pay of male and female employees since President Obama’s first year in office, according to a Washington Post analysis of new salary data.

The average male White House employee currently earns about $88,600, while the average female White House employee earns about $78,400, according to White House data released Tuesday. That is a gap of 13 percent.

In 2009, male employees made an average of about $82,000, compared to an average of $72,700 earned by female employees — also a 13 percent wage gap.

When challenged on why the administration persists in maintaining this pay gap, the White House wisely keeps its mouth shut, but the press offers the kind of explanation that would raise feminist hackles (do feminists have hackles?) if offered by the CEO of a leading business:

One of the key reasons is that more men hold the higher-paying, senior jobs in the White House, and more women hold the lower-paying, junior jobs.
. . .
Obama has made pay equity a central cause this year. He has pushed for hiking the minimum wage in part because it would especially benefit women, and he is advocating passage of legislation that would give women more opportunities to learn whether they are being paid a wage in line with their male peers.

Obamacare Schadenfreude, 7/2/14

A hot, steamy day here, and things to do later, so I should get this one out quick:

Another Security Breach for Obamacare

A Romanian attacker hacked the Vermont health exchange’s development server last December, gaining access at least 15 times and going undetected for a month, according to records obtained by National Review Online.
CGI Group, the tech firm hired to build Vermont Health Connect, described the risk as “high” in a report about the attack. It also found possible evidence of sophisticated “counter-forensics activity performed by the attacker to cover his/her tracks.”

The report says that no private consumer information was stored on the hacked server, and that CGI Group had “verified that no additional servers [that may store private data] communicated with any of the identified attacker IP addresses.”

But Michael Gregg, the CEO of the cyber-security consulting firm Superior Solutions, says it’s possible the hacker went on to access other parts of Vermont Health Connect, covering his tracks and remaining undetected to this day.
. . .
The hacker gained access because the default password to the development server was never changed (in violation of guidelines laid out in the state’s official policy) and because access to the server was not restricted only to users who were known and approved.

But don't worry, you're personal information is safe in the hands of the government. Just ask Lois Lerner. They'll only give it to friendly liberal NGOs for political purposes.

2.6 Million "unresolved" problems remain in Obamacare enrollments:

In case anyone wonders, that comes to about a third of all the enrollments claimed by the White House in the initial open-enrollment period for ObamaCare. Three months later, significant data discrepancies exist, so much so that these consumers may not have health-insurance coverage at all, according to the HHS Inspector General:

The Obama administration has been struggling to clear up data discrepancies that could potentially jeopardize coverage for millions under the health overhaul, the government’s health care fraud watchdog reported Tuesday.
The Health and Human Services inspector general said the administration was not able to resolve 2.6 million so-called “inconsistencies” out of a total of 2.9 million such problems in the federal insurance exchange from October through December 2013.

What kind of "unresolved problems are we talking about here?"

Most of the issues dealt with citizenship and income information supplied by consumers that conflicted with what the federal government has on record, the report said.

If citizenship is an issue, some substantial number of those sign are probably illegal immigrants, and I'm sure the administration will be strongly pushing to allow them to continue on the dole. For the rest, many people are likely going to be surprised by an additional tax bill when their subsidies disappear, or turn out smaller than they expected, and that "affordable health care" turns out not to be so affordable after all.

Health-care exchanges are not properly ensuring applicants’ eligibility, probe finds

The new health insurance marketplaces run by the federal government and some states are not checking carefully enough that Americans who apply for health plans qualify for the coverage and federal subsidies to help pay for it, according to federal investigators.

A pair of reports, issued Tuesday by the Department Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General, conclude that “internal controls” for evaluating applications were not always effective at verifying people’s Social Security numbers, their citizenship, and whether they are eligible to buy health plans through the marketplaces because they cannot find affordable insurance elsewhere.

Guideline Calls Routine Pelvic Exams Unnecessary

Doctors should stop performing routine pelvic exams, a key component of regular physicals for women, an influential medical group said Monday.

There is no evidence that such pelvic exams are useful and plenty to suggest that the procedure provokes fear, anxiety and pain in many women, the American College of Physicians said in a new practice guideline for doctors.

The college’s guideline was published in the Annals of Internal Medicine and was accompanied by an article reviewing the scientific evidence. The recommendation applies only to routine checkups for healthy women, not to women who visit the doctor’s office with medical complaints or who are pregnant.

As noted by Instapundit; with Obamacare, we'll soon be seeing a lot more "routine" health checks eliminated in a drive to save the funds in health care for administrators salaries.

First Obamacare Casualty? Woman in class-action lawsuit against Xerox dies

The Las Vegas woman died Monday, less than two weeks after her family went public with details of how enrollment trouble through the Nevada Health Link insurance exchange kept her from getting treatment in January for an aggressive brain tumor.

Rolain was one of about 150 Nevadans suing Nevada Health Link contractor Xerox for enrollment mixups that left them without the health insurance they paid for.

Rolain is the first to die of complications from an illness that her family said went untreated for lack of coverage. But observers close to her case say she may not be the last, because others are in similarly urgent situations.

Catholic TV gets emergency stay after Hobby Lobby decision:

Late yesterday, the first fruits of the Hobby Lobby decision fell into the lap of EWTN, the Catholic satellite television station which has fought the HHS mandate into the appellate court. Today would have been the first day that EWTN would have to start paying ruinous fines for refusing to provide free contraception and sterilization in its health insurance coverage. Fortunately, the Eleventh Circuit granted a stay not long after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Hobby Lobby:

In a resounding victory for religious freedom, today EWTN was granted last minute relief from the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, one day before the world’s largest religious media network would be forced to violate its deeply help religious convictions or pay crippling fines to the IRS on July 1.
After the district judge recently issued a disappointing ruling against the global Catholic media network, the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty filed an emergency appeal to the Eleventh Circuit. Pending that ruling, the Becket Fund urged the Supreme Court and the Eleventh Circuit to step in to protect EWTN from being forced to provide contraceptives and potentially life-terminating drugs and devices that violate its Catholic teachings. Thanks to the Eleventh Circuit’s decision today to grant temporary emergency relief to the Catholic network, EWTN can now freely practice what it preaches while it pursues its claims in court.

One imagines heads exploding among the left wing like power line transformers in an ice storm.

Need Less Drama in Your Life?

Probably works, too, given the sedative effect.

Castles Made of Sand...

Fall into the sea, eventually:

Today is the 1st Anniversary of my retirement from my position at the Smithsonian Institution as a Research Scientist.  People ask me if I miss work.  No, I don't miss getting up a 6 AM 5 mornings a week, I don't miss the hour up and hour back drive on Rt. 4 and,  I don't missing writing proposals to do marginal science for government agencies and industries to pay my salary and those of my technicians. Hopefully, the financial guy is right, and our retirements will outlive us...

It was also the day of the annual Smithsonian picnic, and as a member of the band, I dutifully got up an hour earlier than my usual 8 or, uh, whatever, and met the band for our annual gig at the picnic.  It went off well, all things considered. I messed up the choruses on "Uncle John's Band", just like Bob Weir, but nailed the solo in the bridge, so that was better than break even.

I made it home late, but after dinner, Georgia suggested we walk the beach.  It's downright warm and muggy today.  We're near the peak temperature of summer here.  Another couple of weeks and it should start to cool again.

Obamacare Schadenfreude - Hobby Lobby Wins, Obama Loses

There's a lot of digits being spent of this, but I suggest you read Ann Althouse's summary:

. . . The Court found a substantial burden to the religion of the owners of the businesses in being required to facilitate what they see as abortions or to pay fines that could be as "as much as $1.3 million per day, or about $475 million per year, in the case of one of the companies."

Under the statute (RFRA), that substantial burden triggers strict scrutiny, and the Court assumes for the purpose of the opinion that the HHS regulations have a compelling interest, because is so easy to say: Even if the interest is compelling, HHS hasn't used the least restrictive means for serving it.

HHS has already put into place a system for contraceptive coverage for religious nonprofit corporations, and it gave "no reason why the same system cannot be made available when the owners of for-profit corporations have similar religious objections."
. . .
If HHS would just give the religious for-profit corporations the same accommodation it already gives to the nonprofit religious corporations, the effect on women employees "would be precisely zero."

Less rigorous, but more fun, you might also enjoy Ace's take:

It occurs to me that the Left is attempting to create a system wherein there are two different classes of citizenship, one fully possessed of its right to speak and act politically, the other whose rights in this regard are sharply curtailed.

That's obvious, that's not the interesting part.

Here's the interesting part, I think: The Left, were it to have its way, would forbid anyone who is not primarily in the business of politics (or working for the government or university) from exercising their full political rights.

If you work in any other industry, your rights are substantially reduced.
Think how much this proposed rule would benefit the Left, were it fully accepted. (It is 85% accepted at the moment.)

The only people who would be permitted to speak on political issues, or at in accordance with their social/cultural/religious/political principles, would be the Political Class Itself, which is of course largely "progressive."

Shopkeeper? Nope, you're not a professional of the political class. Shut up. You have no right to run your business asyour conscience dictates.

Baker? You're not a professional in the political class. Shut up and bake the cake.
And so on. By choosing an economically-productive trade which is not politics, you have ceded most of your rights in the political sphere, per this line of thinking.

The people who retain their full rights are the artists, the academics, the media class, the union officials, the teachers and other civil servants, and all the various functionaries of the permanent DC lobbying/think tank class.

There is one more:  I WAS RIGHT ABOUT THE ACA

Below I will resurrect but five of my own specific predictions about the ACA, contrast them with what many advocates had said, and review what subsequent events have shown.
#1: States will make a variety of decisions with respect to expanding Medicaid.

What I predicted: “In contrast with some statements made by both supporters and opponents of the ACA, the complexities of these decisions suggest that states should be expected to make a wide variety of policy choices.”

Advocates’ claims: “All these states will opt in. Every one.” (Jennifer Granholm) . . .

What has happened: As of June, 2014, the Kaiser Family Foundation lists 27 states (including Washington, D.C.) as “implementing expansion,” 21 as “not moving forward at this time,” and 3 in “open debate.”

#2: Expanding Medicaid will cost the states money, in part because of the “woodwork effect.”

What I predicted: “Projections indicate that... covering newly eligible individuals as well as increased numbers of those previously eligible (but yet uncovered) would add substantially to state budget costs. Effective (federal support) rates associated with expansion will be lower than those expressly provided for in the ACA because of the ‘woodwork effect’ of previously eligible individuals being brought under Medicaid.”

Advocates’ claim: ...The move to greater insurance coverage would likely result in substantial savings for state and local governments. Rather than harming the budget situation of the states, health insurance reform would improve it.” (CEA, Obama White House)

What has happened: “At least a couple of states have already cited higher-than-expected costs... This graph from a December 2012 NASBO report shows how Medicaid has been taking a greater portion of state general funds, while education spending has decreased.”

#3: The ACA will significantly worsen the federal budget deficit.

What I predicted: “The Affordable Care Act (ACA) enacted in 2010 will significantly worsen the federal government’s fiscal position relative to previous law...

Advocates’ claim: “According to the official Administration and Congressional scorekeepers, the Affordable Care Act will reduce the deficit: its costs are more than fully paid for.” (White House Blog)

What has happened: Two months after my study was published, CBO’s next long-term budget outlook clarified explicitly that I was correct: CBO’s baseline comparison that appeared to show the ACA reducing the deficit did not reflect how it changed actual law: “Projections in this report are consistent with a statutory requirement that CBO, in its baseline projections, assume that benefit payments will continue to be made after trust funds have been exhausted, even if there is no legal authority to make such payments.”

#4: Expanding health insurance coverage will increase health service consumption and costs.

What I predicted: “The same report found that the uninsured received only about 55 percent of the total medical care received by the insured population and that, if covered, per-person health spending for the uninsured would increase by 39 percent...

Advocates’ claim: “It is deficit-neutral; it bends the cost curve; it covers 30 million Americans who don't have health insurance... to make sure that people are getting the care they need and the checkups they need and the screenings they need before they get sick—which will save all of us money and reduce pressures on emergency rooms all across the country.” (President Obama)

What has happened: “As the health-care law expands Medicaid to cover millions more Americans, a new Harvard University study finds that enrollment... significantly increases enrollees' use of emergency departments.”

#5: There was a substantial risk that cost savings projected for several ACA provisions would not fully materialize.

What I predicted: “The legislation employs comparatively uncertain cost-saving measures as budgetary offsets for comparatively certain cost-increasing provisions... The proceeds of such cost-savings cannot safely be spent until they have verifiably accrued.”

Advocates’ claims: “$750 billion in reliable revenues and savings... $145 billion saved... by phasing out overpayments to... Medicare Advantage... $69 billion in penalties paid by employers and individuals who choose not to purchase insurance... $32 billion raised by taxing very expensive (“Cadillac”) health insurance policies...

What has happened: The employer and individual mandates have not been enforced and there is mounting pressure for repeal. Planned Medicare Advantage cuts have been scaled back. The Cadillac plan tax has not yet taken effect and labor unions are mobilizing against its implementation.
. . .
While we cannot erase past policy mistakes, going forward we should make better use of predictive information widely available to lawmakers, press and public, than was done in the case of the ACA.

These same points have been made time and time again in Obamacare Schadenfreude posts.

Midnite Music - "Missing You"

Wombat-socho has the great "Rule 5 Tuesday – Belated Independence Day Weekend Edition" up at The Other McCain.

Detroit Residents Won't Pay for Water

The entitlement mentality run amok - Majority Of Delinquent Detroit Water Customers In Culture Of: ‘You’re Not Making Me Pay,’

Several people protested outside the Detroit Water And Sewerage Department building Thursday, saying customers are having service cut off at an alarming rate and the practice is inhumane.

Organizer David Bullock with the Change Agent Consortium says the water department is going after customers that may be as little as $150 delinquent and says the department ignores large corporations which are behind.

“People always want to attack the poor … why are we attacking poor people?” he asked. But when asked which large companies are behind in their payments, Bullock would only say that WWJ should research the issue.

“I think you all should be standing with us,” Bullock told WWJ’s Marie Osborne. “I think you all should be demanding the same level of accountability for firms and corporations in the city of Detroit – that they are levying on residential customers.” The water department states that there are about 60,000 delinquent accounts in the city of Detroit – with the average arrearage about $560.

City of Detroit Water And Sewerage Department Deputy Director, Darryl Latimer, said every account corporate or private is treated the same, adding that the water department does what they can to work with those who come forward and address their hardship situation. “The majority of our customers (who) are in delinquency status, they just built a culture of ,’You’re not making me pay— I am not going to pay’,” said Latimer.

As a board member of the local water co-op, I would just add that the entitlement philosophy regarding water is not restricted to Detroit.  We have a significant number of people in arrears, some to the same level of mid hundred dollars, and many people just don't pay until the shut off notice is put on their doors.

It costs real money to develop water sources, treat the water, store the water for use, and pump the water to consumers. Why people think it should be their right to get it just for breathing is disheartening. The cheaper something is, the less people value it.

Obamacare Schadenfreude - Working Hard for the Money

A few days worth of accumulated Obamacare Schadenfreude, which despite the storm of VA and IRS scandal, keeps putting out bad news:

Did ObamaCare screw up the GDP report?

Yesterday’s (June 25th, ed.) cliff dive of an economic-growth report from the BEA had a lot of people scratching their heads over the last 24 hours. How exactly did the BEA start with an advance estimate of 0.1% annualized GDP growth in Q1 to a final estimate of -2.9%, a full three points of difference? The Wall Street Journal’s Eric Morath and Louise Radnofsky explain that the BEA bought into the Obama administration model of ObamaCare, and just assumed that the enrollment figures for Medicaid and private insurance on the exchanges meant that a deluge of spending would follow. Instead, the actual numbers turned out to be significantly more sour:

Spending on health-care services declined at a 1.4% annualized pace in the first quarter, compared to an earlier estimate of a 9.1% increase. That revision contributed to a revision of gross domestic product to a 2.9% annualized decline from an earlier estimate of a 1% decline.
The revision in the health-care category was the largest in recent memory, said Nicole Mayerhauser, an official that oversees GDP statistics at the Commerce Department’sBureau of Economic Analysis. …
For the first two estimates of any quarter’s GDP, the Commerce Department doesn’t have direct figures on health-care output. Instead it uses wage and employment data to make estimates. Sometimes government economists consider other measures to augment their approximations.
Initially, they considered Medicaid benefit figures and the number of Americans enrolling in coverage made available under the new health-care law. That data showed an increase in Medicaid outlays and that millions of Americans were signing up for healthcare insurance, leading the Commerce Department to forecast an increase for health outlays.
In the initial reading of first-quarter GDP, released in April, the Commerce Department noted this methodology. With more reliable data now available from a Census survey, those early assumptions have essentially been replaced with more reliable figures.
Ms. Mayerhauser said the Commerce Department doesn’t plan to regularly incorporate data related to the Affordable Care Act into its standard methodologies.

In essence, then, the administration’s assumptions about ObamaCare promoting usage turned out to be incorrect, at least in the short term. Daily Beast analyst Daniel Gross warns that ObamaCare seems to be disturbing health care deliveries, if not the rest of the economy . . .

And the "Death Spiral" takes another whirl. Obamacare's Prognosis Grows Dimmer

A nightmare for Affordable Care Act supporters has been the possibility that only the sick would be left to purchase insurance through its exchanges, driving premiums up and insurers out. While the law’s boosters have been quick to dismiss the possibility that such a so-called death spiral could occur, data published in the Wall Street Journal suggest that this chain of events may not be so far-fetched after all.

The findings are significant not just for what they say about how Obamacare is working now, but also for their impact on the political debate over its future.

At its base, the data show that people insured through the law’s exchanges have higher rates of serious medical conditions. Of the enrollees who have seen a doctor or other health-care provider in the first quarter of this year, 27 percent have significant medical problems, including diabetes, cancer, heart trouble and psychiatric conditions. That rate is substantially higher than that for patients in nonexchange market plans over the same period. And it’s more than double the rate of those who were able to hold onto their existing individual market insurance plans after President Barack Obama was forced to allow them to keep them.

Ya think? Kathleen Sebelius: I 'made some mistakes'

Former Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius acknowledged Friday that she made mistakes leading up to the rollout of the Affordable Care Act, worrying too much about whether there’d be a market for Obamacare and spending “too little time clearly on the technology side.”

“I sure made some mistakes along the way in terms of focusing on some things and not on others,” she said at the Aspen Ideas Festival. Instead of confirming what she was being told about HealthCare.gov’s readiness “was actually accurate and getting enough eyes and ears on that,” she said she concentrated on the insurers, consumers and regulators who needed to come together in the health exchanges.

You believed the bureaucrats would tell the truth?

Confusion over doctor lists is costly for Obamacare enrollees in California

Limiting the number of medical providers was part of an effort by insurers to hold down premiums. But confusion over the new plans has led to unforeseen medical bills for some patients and prompted a state investigation.

More complaints are surfacing as patients start to use their new coverage bought through Covered California, the state's health insurance exchange.
. . .
Insurers insist that pruning the network of doctors is a crucial cost-cutting measure and a major reason that so many Californians could find affordable coverage in the health law's first year.

"These narrow networks are making a huge difference in terms of affordability," said Mark Morgan, president of Anthem Blue Cross, a unit of industry giant WellPoint Inc. "We found in convincing numbers that people value price above all else."

Giving people skin in the game was part of the point of health care reform, but when done too suddenly, it ends injuring their skin.

And of course, there's another side; make life harder for doctors, and you get less doctors:

Supply won't meet growing demand for primary care

The U.S. is expected to need 52,000 more primary care physicians by 2025, according to a study by the Robert Graham Center, which does family medicine policy research. But funding for teaching hospitals that could train thousands more of these doctors expires in late 2015.

Population growth will drive most of the need for family care doctors, accounting for 33,000 additional physicians, the study says. The aging population will require about 10,000 more. The Affordable Care Act is expected to increase the number of family doctors needed by more than 8,000, the study says.

Farzan Bharucha, a health care strategist with consulting firm Kurt Salmon, says the ACA should have focused more on the primary care shortage "because we already knew there was a problem -- and we knew implementation of ACA would potentially make it worse."

But the democrats are resentful of the money doctors make, unlike, say Hillary Clinton, who works hard for her money:



Wombat-socho has the great "Rule 5 Tuesday – Belated Independence Day Weekend Edition" up at The Other McCain.

Why I Like Brazil for the World Cup

Linked at "The Paste", A Poor Mans Conservatarian News Aggregator. Wombat-socho has the great "Rule 5 Tuesday – Belated Independence Day Weekend Edition" up at The Other McCain.

You Think Snakeheads are a Problem?

How would you like wild hippos loose around the region? Pablo Escobar’s hippos: A growing problem

What do you mean, I need a root canal?

A herd of hippopotamuses once owned by the late Colombian drug baron Pablo Escobar has been taking over the countryside near his former ranch - and no-one quite knows what to do with them.

I guess a place to start is how they taste, and whether there's a market for them in China,

It was in 2007, 14 years after Escobar's death, that people in rural Antioquia, 200 miles north-west of Bogota, began phoning the Ministry of Environment to report sightings of a peculiar animal.

"They found a creature in a river that they had never seen before, with small ears and a really big mouth," recalls Carlos Valderrama, from the charity Webconserva.
He went to look, and found himself faced with the task of explaining to startled villagers that this was an animal from Africa. A hippopotamus.

"The fishermen, they were all saying, 'How come there's a hippo here?'" he recalls. "We started asking around and of course they were all coming from Hacienda Napoles. Everything happened because of the whim of a villain."

But at least he was an animal lover. . .

Situated halfway between the city of Medellin and Bogota, the Colombian capital, Hacienda Napoles was the vast ranch owned by the drugs baron Pablo Escobar. In the early 1980s, after Escobar had become rich but before he had started the campaign of assassinations and bombings that was to almost tear Colombia apart, he built himself a zoo.

This may seem like a small problem, but hippos are the worlds most dangerous wild mammal, according to this article.  And it takes a really big fly rod to land them.

Croak, Croak!

We skipped the beach walk this morning to go croaker fishing.  We took a couple of old rods and reels set with pairs of circle hooks, baited with "Fishbites", artificial bait made from a pasty gel laid on a cloth strip, available in bloodworm, squid and crab flavors.  I had all three, and squid was by far the most productive.

A mild day out; no wind to speak of, temperatures in the high 70s, but not very humid.

Our first stop was out in the far end of the outflow from "Location X", where we caught most of the fish out in 25 feet of water or so. I made let Georgia reel in most of the fish, and she tried every "Wicked Tuna" cliche from "Color!", "Get the harpoon", to "We don't have him 'til we have the tail rope on him"!

We also saw Bald Eagles, Ospreys and a few other boats fishing.

After a partial return from "Location X", we stopped in the shallower waters off the shores of our own beach, and tried there a while.  Shockingly, there were croakers there, too, although they seemed to have preference for the crab flavored fish bites over the squid flavored one.  Same size though, only about 9.5-10 inches (9 inches is the minimum size).  We left with the fish still biting (although, one stole one of my rods out of a rod holder), and when we got home we had 12 croaker and one Norfolk Spot. Thank goodness for electric fillet knives!

Hateful Fish Name Changed

Liberals passed a bill to change this fish’s name because it is “hurtful” and “offensive”

From Breitbart:

The Minnesota Senate approved John Hoffman’s (D-MN) bill to change the name “Asian carp” so called because the species originates from Asia, to “invasive carp”. Since Asian carp were introduced in the U.S. in the 1970′s, the fish have spread to dozens of states causing destruction in the delicate ecosystems of the waterways.
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have been fighting off the most invasive species, the black carp from China, the Silver carp from Vietnam, and Grass carp from China from spreading into the Great Lakes were the fish could do massive damage the regions fishing industry. While arguing his case on the Senate floor, Hoffman said that referring to the fish as “Asian” was hurtful to some people

What animal is next? Black Bear? Siberian Tiger?

Or how about butterfly names; will the Red Admiral become the Native American Admiral, the Black Swallowtail the African American Swallowtail, the Cabbage White the Cabbage Caucasian? This way lies madness.

Canada Blows Off Obama, Keystone Pipeline

Canada decides to send the oil to China after all.

Claiming it could no longer abide the Obama administration's five-year refusal to approve construction of the Keystone XL pipeline designed to bring 830,000 barrels a day of much-needed Alberta shale oil to U.S. refineries, the Canadian government recently approved plans for a huge new pipeline and port project to ship that oil to Asia instead.

When completed, the $7.9 billion Enbridge Northern Gateway Project, approved by Canada’s federal government on June 17, will consist of an environmentally safe, 730-mile oil pipeline. It will be capable of moving 600,000 barrels a day of Alberta oil to the pacific coast town of Kitimat, British Columbia, where a new state-of-the-art super tanker port facility will be built to ship the oil to thirsty Asian ports.

It was initially hoped that recent discoveries of massive new Canadian oil and gas reserves could benefit both Canada and the United States by building a safe and reliable pipeline to bring the oil to U.S. refineries in Louisiana and Texas. Building the proposed 1,179-mile Keystone pipeline promised, not just a huge new supply of reliable, clean, and affordable oil to U.S. markets, but the creation of up to 20,000 high-paying construction jobs. An additional 22,000 jobs economists predicted would have resulted from the broader economic stimulus the project would have generated.

Rather than purchasing crude from a friendly and allied neighbor, the United States will most likely need to continue its reliance upon hostile sources like Venezuela. Energy analysts had hoped that construction of Keystone could have replaced almost half of the current U.S. daily crude purchases from that volatile, anti-American dictatorship, depriving Venezuela of the resources it relies upon to stay in power and fund its Cuban allies.

Refusal to approve Keystone has forced suppliers to deliver their flammable crude via thousands of trucks and railcars traveling on America’s highways and railroads, rather than in a pipeline.

So the oil will get produced, processed and burned, in a different, and dirtier way than it would be in the US, with less jobs for US workers.

Mission accomplished, Team Obama!

PSA: CPR Refresher Course

I think I forgot something; I'd better watch it a few more times.

Ripped off from Theo's. Wombat-socho has the great "Rule 5 Tuesday – Belated Independence Day Weekend Edition" up at The Other McCain.

From the Garden

These pictures are from yesterday, but they could have been from today; the days were nearly identical twins. Temperatures to 85ish, some, but not oppressive humidity, and blue skies.  I even saw this Red Admiral (Vanessa atalanta) butterfly in the garden both days, or one very much like it.

This is my first sighting of this butterfly this year, and it chose some rather unphotogenic backdrops; in this case, the wet blacktop of our driveway seemed to be its target, sipping some moisture.  I was surprised to see this fact in its entry in butterfliesandmoths.org:

Cannot survive coldest winters; most of North America must be recolonized each spring by southern migrants.

So, did this one fly in from Mexico?

Can you spot the frog?

Rule 5 Saturday - Black Box's Kelly Reilly

This week's Rule 5 special selection is Kelly Reilly, star of ABCs "Black Box", a summer show in which she convincingly plays a crazy lady (is casting a striking redhead as insane typecasting?).  More specifically, she plays a neurologist with severe manic depressive disorder. We discovered it one night when nothing else was on and we were too lazy to check on demand. Yeah, that's what I want, an insane doctor.

An English actress (the British Isles have the highest concentration of the throwback Neanderthal ginger genes of anywhere in the world), after a hefty theater career in British comedy, she switched to drama, and played in a long list of films, including "Dead Bodies" (2003), "The Libertine" (2004), "Mrs Henderson Presents" (2005), "Puffball" (2007) (NSFW links) and "Sherlock Holmes" I and II (2009 and 2011).

We don't predict a long life for this one, so if you want to see her in action, you better hurry.

Crappy Study Shows Neandertal Liked Salad with Steak

Newly discovered 50,000-year-old poop proves the Neanderthals ate better than you do

Scientists discovered 50,000-year-old human poop while excavating the ancient Neanderthal site El Salt, located in Spain near the port of Alicante on the Mediterranean.

“The poop samples come from rock layers dated to roughly 50,000 years ago,” reported USA Today. This sample is much older than any previously found human excrement, including possible 14,000-year-old poop from Oregon and 6,000- to 7,000-year-old poop from Turkey.

Besides being the oldest known coprolite (fossilized dung), this Neanderthal poop holds a different scientific significance: possible proof that Neanderthals ate plants. A study on the findings was published Monday in the journal PLOS One.

Previously data and zooarcheological studies concluded that Neanderthals were mainly carnivorous. This new evidence suggests otherwise. According to the Los Angeles Times:

“Using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, researchers studied the powdered samples for traces of stanols and sterols, lipids that are formed in the intestines when gut bacteria act on plant and animal matter.

“The authors said that samples taken from five different areas suggested that Neanderthals predominantly consumed meat, but also had significant plant intake.”
“Neanderthals are primates after all,” lead author Aniara Sistiaga told the Los Angeles Times. “Our findings are solid evidence of a dietary component — plants — that so far has been missing in the fossil record.”

So Salon is willing to insist that Neandertal Man ate better than we did after a study showed that they ate plants?  Even though they might have eaten them as gut contents?  What was it Mark Twain said about science?

There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact. ~Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi, 1883

Homo Bureaucratus

From Smitty at The Other McCain: Homo Bureaucratus Is The Problem

Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.–Lord Acton

Over time, even petty amounts of power bring out the Nixon in all of us. Via Instapundit, Mark Fiztgibbons writes:

In America’s first 100 years, federal officials could be sued in state courts for acting beyond their authority. In his book Creating the Administrative Constitution, Yale law professor Jerry Mashaw chronicles how this helped temper bad behavior.
Law professor Glenn Reynolds over at Instapundit is among those who believe that government officials need more civil and criminal liability for their bad acts. There are some private remedies on the books, but they are too weak to be effective.

Liability is not nothing, but I think it’s peripheral to the issue of concentrating power. Power makes cocaine look like talcum. Witness Cochran’s cheerful apparent flouting of the rules in the Mississippi GOP senatorial runoff. Likely not a surfeit of altruism in his case.

There still is no work-around for the need to have offices, and for officials to occupy them. However, in our Information Age, there isn’t any excuse for the rules being other than simple, understandable, and open to all. Furthermore, the kind of ball-hogging we see with career bureaucrats is clearly a 20th century holdover. Thus, other than the military, I submit that about a 10 year cap on all civil service positions would make sense. Keep the job simple, let people do the job, and let them get out of the way for someone else.
Let’s term-limit the corruption in our government down to an absolute minimum, say I. Homo bureaucratus is not the solution.

An interesting notion, but I still prefer my "modest proposal" for a political affirmative action plan for the federal bureaucracy.  Fire half of them (they're all democrats) and replace them with a mixture of republicans, greens, libertarians in proportion to their prevalence in the voting public, and let them police each other.

In the meantime, this image of Homo bureaucratus dealing with Tea Party 401(c)(3) applications:

And I finally get around to acknowledging Wombat-socho's "Rule 5 Monday: Air-Cooled" several days late.