Craig Ferguson Attempts the Impossible

Not to stare:



Carrie Keagan

Wombat-socho has "Rule 5 Sunday: Summertime Girls" ready at The Other McCain.

Reason #5557 That Trump Was Elected

Trump Deporting So Many MS-13 Gang Members That El Salvador’s Government Is Holding Special Meetings

President Donald Trump has promised to continually purge U.S. streets of MS-13, the notorious, violent gang that originates in El Salvador, Central America.

But if the President continues to send MS-13 members back to Central America, Salvadoran officials worry that the country’s crime and violence will only grow – and they have begun discussing contingencies for the scenario.

“This clearly affects El Salvador,” Hector Antonio Rodriquez, the country’s Immigration Agency Director, told the Washington Post. “We already have a climate of violence in the country that we are combating. If gang members return, of course this worries us.”

According to Salvadoran government statistics, the U.S. government has deported 398 gang members this year alone – compared to 534 members throughout 2016.

The increase in gang deportations has prompted Salvadoran officials to hold emergency meetings and propose legislation that would monitor returning suspected criminals, according to the report.

The President has tweeted about MS-13 and the danger in not stopping gang members from entering the United States, saying “[t]he Democrats don’t want money from budget going to border wall despite the fact that it will stop drugs and very bad MS 13 gang members.”

More are accused in MS-13-related killings in Virginia, Maryland



Linked at Pirate's Cove in the weekly "Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup" and links.

Designated Rule 5 Survivor - Maggie Q

This weeks designated Rule 5 survivor is Maggie Q (aka Maggie Denise Quigley), one of the stars of the current ABC drama Designated Survivor, a bit of liberal wishful thinking about a mild mannered, professorial cabinet member who suddenly finds himself President after a bombing at the Capitol takes out the president and most of the Congress. You can imagine the rest.

Maggie Q is an American actress and model. She is known for starring in the action films Mission: Impossible III and Live Free or Die Hard and played the title role of The CW's action-thriller series Nikita, airing from 2010 to 2013. In 2014, she portrayed Tori Wu in the film adaptation of Veronica Roth's novel Divergent, a role she reprised in its sequels, Insurgent and Allegiant. She currently stars in the role of Agent Hannah Wells in the ABC political drama Designated Survivor.

Q was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii. Her father is of Irish and Polish descent and her mother is a Vietnamese immigrant. Her parents met while her father was stationed in Vietnam during the Vietnam War.

At the suggestion of a friend, Q began modeling in Tokyo at the age of 17, before making an unsuccessful move to Taipei, and finally trying in Hong Kong. She has said it was not easy for her: "I had twenty bucks in my pocket. I mean, I literally did the same thing that my mother did when she left Vietnam... didn't speak the language... had no money." But, it was in Hong Kong that she was selected by Jackie Chan, because he saw a potential action star. His intensive training taught her the importance of professionalism and always doing her own stunts. Q later said, "I had never done a day of martial arts in my life when I started in the business. I couldn’t even touch my toes." 

This week GOODSTUFFs BLOGGING MAGAZINE (295th Issue) has all kinds of Wonder Woman Wonderment with Gal Gadot, Lynda Carter and Cathy Lee Crosby! Warning: This monumental meta blog post contains minute electrically charged particles moving at velocities in excess of 42 miles per hour. Linked at Pirate's Cove in the weekly "Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup" and links. Wombat-socho has "Rule 5 Sunday: Bomber Girl" and "FMJRA 2.0: Meanwhile, Back In The Desert…" up on time and within budget.

There's Something in a Name

Another mass Striped Bass poaching bust on the Eastern Shore at Fishing Creek. From the MD DNR website:

Continued surveillance at Fishing Creek Bridge in Dorchester County resulted in charges against 18 people and the seizure of 261 striped bass.

On May 28 at 5:20 a.m., the following people were charged with catching too many striped bass and keeping undersized fish: Omar Martinez Ramirez, 24, of Lanham; Felipe Rodriguez Morales, 28, of Lanham; Ruperto Cruz Carino Blames, 24, of Lanham; Anselmo Luna Lima, 23, of Hyattsville; Eden Ramirez Labastida, 24, of Beltsville; and Luis Luna Lima, 21 of Hyattsville.

A short time later, officers charged the following people with catching too many fish and keeping undersized fish: Sergio Noe Martinez Monroy, 39, of Hyattsville; Elvir Rigoberto Ortiz Aroche, 34, of Mount Ranier; and Edin Najera Morales, 38, of Hyattsville.

Earlier, officers charged five people from Temple Hill: Cinthia Servellon Mercado, 24, Eli Barue Colindres Navarrete, 39, Gustavo Adolfo Ostoro-Gald, 36, Julio Flores, 35, and Omar Ezequiel Castro, 18, were each charged with possession of undersized striped bass, exceeding the daily creel limit and fishing in a prohibited area. All but Ostoro-Gald also were charged with fishing without a license.

All 14 defendants are due in Dorchester County District Court Aug. 16. Each charge carries a maximum fine of $1,500.

On May 27, shortly after midnight, officers charged the following people: Bani Asael Garcis Barahona, 33, of Oxon Hill; Carlos Enrique Cabrera Ramirez, 45, of Temple Hills; Adriana Beatriz Lopez Mejia, 27, of Oxon Hill; and Yeny Sarai Juarez Velasquez, 35, of Oxon Hill.

The four defendants have been schedule to appear in Dorchester County District Court July 19.

How many of these will be found to be illegal immigrants? For those counting, that's the third time this year.

Reason #5556 That Trump Was Elected

As promised in his campaign, Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris Climate "Accords", a treaty that President Obama entered, but never submitted to the Senate, knowing it would fail.

Why you shouldn't care: In one graph, why the #ParisAgreement is useless

Even by the best estimates of its proponents, it saves the earth warming 0.2 C by 2100, and would cost the US millions of jobs and trillions of dollars of lost productivity . And don't get me going on the reliability of the climate models used for these projections.

Anthony Watts has a round up of The craziest reactions to Trump pulling out of the #ParisAgreement, as does Ace.

In this one, the ACLU confirms it was never about the climate, rather redistribution of the wealth:

Pulling out of the Paris Agreement would be a massive step back for racial justice, and an assault on communities of color across the U.S.

— ACLU National (@ACLU) June 1, 2017

From Ace's morning report 2 days ago:

Good morning, kids. June is busting out all over (her bra's too small) and so is the staff at the Morning Report with lots of link-fu for you. First up, and this is yuuge, the President is expected to announce that the US is withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accords, and that is a good thing. That said, Rush went on an extended and highly informative monologue not only about the Accords but about something that I, and maybe most of you, have never heard of: The Treaty on Treaties. Here's the salient pull-quote from the show:

So in summary, the Paris Accord is not a treaty, but yet it could end up being enforced as one because of our own law called the Treaty on Treaties, which simply says that if we announce support in principle, that if we sign an ancillary document promising to do what we can, that is the same thing as the Senate ratifying it with two-thirds of the Senate voting. It is a trick by globalists to get the United States to sign a treaty -by the way- well, I say trick. The people that voted for this understood exactly what they were doing. Nobody was tricked here except the American people. I don't mean to imply that members of Congress or the Senate were tricked. They knew exactly what they were doing. . .
It is a mechanism to commit the United States to things that are drastically, horribly detrimental to us without going through the constitutional process that ratifies such treaties. It substitutes verbal consent of agreement in principle, say, as the equivalent of a signature and two-thirds of the Senate voting to affirm. The American people are being told, "It's toothless." In fact, here's the message that's being used by the media to try to convince Trump to sign this. . . And that is not true. If he signs on to this, it is a huge promise broken. It is a huge violation of trust. It may be something insurmountable for the president and his base to sign on to this. It is not harmless.

I had no idea about this and it's disgusting. By the way, there is a lot of confusion about the Accords in that Obama has already agreed to them, so President Trump has to announce that he is completely withdrawing the USA from them without any qualifications or other asides or "pledges" to be concerned, etc. as lip service to the enviro-statists, Globalists or others in the Administration and elsewhere. And Andy McCarthy is right. After Trump ditches this insanity, he needs to ditch the Treaty on Treaties as well. It is completely anti-Constitutional.

Fish Pic Friday - Red Drum

Brooke Thomas

This week's fish is the Red Drum, or Redfish

The red drum (Sciaenops ocellatus), also known as channel bass, redfish, spottail bass, or simply red, is a game fish found in the Atlantic Ocean from Massachusetts to Florida and in the Gulf of Mexico from Florida to northern Mexico. It is the only species in the genus Sciaenops. The red drum is related to the black drum (Pogonias cromis), and the two species are often found in close proximity to each other; they can interbreed and form a robust hybrid, and younger fish are often indistinguishable in flavor.

Darcizzle

They're a decent eating fish, but not as good as croaker.

Red drum are a dark red color on the back, which fades into white on the belly. The red drum has a characteristic eyespot near the tail and is somewhat streamlined. Three-year-old red drum typically weigh 6-8 lb. The largest red drum on record weighed just over 94 lb and was caught in 1984 on Hatteras Island. Red drum and black drum both make a croaking or drumming sound when distressed.

The most distinguishing mark on the red drum is one large black spot on the upper part of the tail base. Having multiple spots is not uncommon for this fish, but having no spots is extremely rare. As the fish with multiple spots grow older, they seem to lose their excess spots. Scientists believe that the black spot near their tail helps fool predators into attacking the red drum's tail instead of its head, allowing the red drum to escape.

Luiza

I have my doubts, but there are eyespots on a lot of animals, so maybe it works, it may also convince predators that they are facing another predator, and deter them.

The red drum uses its senses of sight and touch, and its downturned mouth, to locate forage on the bottom through vacuuming or biting. On the top and middle of the water column, it uses changes in the light that might look like food. In the summer and fall, adult red drum feed on crabs, shrimp, and mullet; in the spring and winter, adults primarily feed on menhaden, mullet, pinfish, sea robin, lizardfish, spot, Atlantic croaker, and mudminnows.

Dr. Julie Ball

In other words, pretty much anything they stumble across.

Red drum naturally occur along the southern Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coasts of Louisiana, Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida. Aquaculture activities involving them occur around the world. Immature red drum prefer grass marsh areas of bays and estuaries when available. Both younger mature red drum (3-6 years of age) and bull red drum prefer rocky outcroppings including jetties and manmade structures, such as oil rigs and bridge posts. Around this type of structure, they are found throughout the water column.

Redfish visit the Chesapeake Bay in warmer months, though as we have seen, a few small ones seem to stick around the warm water in the CCNPP discharge well into winter. A slot limit is set on Redfish, only fish 18-28 inches may be kept. A large run of very large reds, 40 inches and up move around the Bay and surprise people occasionally. I've never been that lucky, although I have caught some. The limit was set in the wake of one of the great victories of fisheries science.

In the early 1980s, the chef Paul Prudhomme made his dish of Cajun-style blackened redfish (red drum) popular. His seasoning was then sold commercially and the dish became so popular that redfish were overfished to the point of near extinction.

I doubt they were really near extinction, but the regulations (which are similar coast wide) have done a lot to bring them back.

Wombat-socho has "Rule 5 Sunday: Bomber Girl" up on time and within budget.

Beach Report June 1, 2017

Another glorious late spring day at the beach, with temperatures approaching 80 F, with light winds. You can see some fresh markers in the harbor channel. The dredge is in, and they will start to clear the channel to make it more comfortable for blow boats soon.

 The Ospreys were out fishing.

Fossil hunting was tough, but I found a piece of stingray spine, and a few teeth

I met Ann up near the end of the walk. She is visiting the area from Wisconsin while her husband works on the gas docks project. She was looking for shark's teeth, and wasn't sure what they looked like (she was expecting white). Fortunately, I had one to show her, and explain what to look for.

A new butterfly for the year, the American Snout.

Garcia Guitar Gets $1.9 M at Auction

Jerry Garcia's "Wolf" Fetches $1.9 Million at Auction

A guitar that Jerry Garcia played everywhere from San Francisco's Winterland Ballroom to Egypt's Great Pyramids fetched over $1.9 million at an auction in New York.

The Grateful Dead frontman's guitar - named Wolf - was purchased at a charity auction in Brooklyn Wednesday night. The proceeds are earmarked for the Montgomery, Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center.

I don't approve, since the SPLC has become a violence inspiring hate group.

The guitar was owned by devoted Deadhead Daniel Pritzker. The philanthropist, musician and film director bought it in 2002 at Guernsey's for $790,000.

The auctioneer says Wolf first appeared in a 1973 New York performance the Grateful Dead gave for the Hells Angels.

Much. much more on this guitar, and all of Jerry Garcia's guitars at this blog post.

The Eagle

From 1973 to 1993 Garcia played the guitar created by Doug Irwin and called Wolf.

Irwin had just started building guitars at Alembic. This was a company run by Ron Wickersham, an electronics and sound expert that previously worked for Ampex, Rick Turner, a luthier and guitarist, and Bob Matthews, a recording engineer.

The company started in a rehearsal room for the Grateful Dead, so there was an immediate connection between Alembic and the band.

As the story goes, Doug Irwin was recently hired by the Alembic company and was building electric guitars for them and he also built some for himself. The first one that Jerry Garcia purchased was known as The Eagle.

Wolf with 3 single coils

This was the guitar that Jerry found when he came from the music store that where Irwin was employed. This guitar had humbucking pickups. At the time Garcia preferred the sound of his Stratocaster with single coil pickups.

Garcia asked him to build him another guitar. Irwin took a cue from this and created The Wolf, which he sold to Jerry Garcia in 1972 for $850. Garcia played this guitar for more than 20 years.

Garcia asked Irwin to optimize Wolf with three single coil Stratocaster pickups. This guitar was made of purpleheart wood and curly maple. The fret board was ebony with 24 frets; longer than Fenders, which at the time only had 22 frets. The first version had a peacock inlay made of abalone, but in subsequent years Irwin changed this to an eagle.

A blood-thirsty cartoon sticker of a wolf adorned the body. This gave the guitar its name.

In later years the middle and bridge single coil pickups were swapped out for humbuckers. This was an easy change because Irwin configured the pickups on a metal plate. In fact it was Irwin who created both plates for the guitar.

The pickup selector is the five position strat type. The guitar features a master volume control and a tone control for the middle and front pickups. Two mini switches on the guitar are pickup coil switches, to choose between humbucking and single coil. There are two ¼” phone jacks. One goes to the amp and the other goes to Jerry’s effects loop. There is also a mini switch to toggle the effects loop on or off.

The electronics are accessible from a plate on the guitars back side and they are shielded.

The tuning machines are Schaller’s and made of chromed nickel as is the bridge. This was the first guitar Irwin built that had the D shaped headstock that he used on other guitars he made as his trademark. On the headstock was the inlay of a peacock done in mother-of-pearl.

While at a concert the guitar fell about 15 feet off of the stage and this caused a small crack in the head stock. Doug Irwin took this as an opportunity to replace the head stock with ebony veneer and a mother-of-pearl inlay of an eagle, which by now had become Doug Irwin’s signature. Jerry Garcia used the three single coil pickup plate up until 1978 when he had the single coil neck pickup and twin Dimarzio Dual Sound humbuckers for the middle and bridge positions.

Almost immediately after Garcia received The Wolf he commissioned Doug Irwin to design another guitar. This new guitar is the one that would come to be known as The Tiger

Here's Wolf in action at Winterland in 1974

Reason #5554 - #5555 That Trump Was Elected

DoJ releases first figures for illegal aliens currently in prison, and I would call it shockingly high, but, somehow, I'm not shocked.

You may recall one of President Trump’s earlier executive orders dealing with Public Safety in the Interior of the United States. Part of that order directed the Department of Homeland Security and the Attorney General to begin compiling data on illegal immigrants who are incarcerated, detailing the immigration status and possible detention or deportation orders for each. The first round of data compilation in accordance with that order has been completed and the DoJ sent out a news release today with the figures. It will probably come as no surprise to at least some of you that the figures are described as “significant.”

There are 45,493 foreign-born inmates currently in BOP custody, of which 3,939 are U.S. citizens (either naturalized or derivative). Of the remaining 41,554 foreign-born inmates (aliens):

• Approximately 22,541 (54.2 percent) are aliens for which final immigration orders have been issued for their removal;
• Approximately 13,886 (33.4 percent) are aliens who are under ICE investigation for possible removal;
• Approximately 5,101 (12.3 percent) are aliens still pending adjudication (in other words, ICE has charged these aliens as removal cases, but a final disposition has not yet been reached); and
• Approximately 26 (0.1 percent) are aliens who have been granted relief on the basis of asylum claims.

Jeff Sessions provided introductory comments in the report, noting that, “Illegal aliens who commit additional crimes in the United States are a threat to public safety and a burden on our criminal justice system.” This will undoubtedly have a number of liberal activists setting their hair on fire, but this really just comes down to math.

 Thousands of Foreigners Registered to Vote (and Voting) in Virginia

A new report released today documents that in Virginia alone, 5,556 voter registrations were cancelled because of citizenship defects. Many of those cancelled had gotten on the voter rolls despite saying on their voter registration form that they were an alien and not eligible to vote.

Voter history records also show that many thousands of ballots were cast by registrants removed for citizenship defects.

Only Americans should be electing American leaders, but that isn't happening.

Even worse, the report documents the extensive efforts by state and local election officials to conceal the extent of noncitizen registration and voting.

These efforts include internal emails that revealed an intent to alter public records to hide the full extent of noncitizen cancellations.

The report, titled "Alien Invasion II: The Sequel to the Discovery and Cover Up of Non-Citizen Registration and Voting in Virginia," notes that the 5,556 removed for citizenship defects in Virginia are only the tip of the iceberg. These 5,556 were only caught by accident after each told a state agency of his or her alien status after previously registering to vote. Had they never provided an inconsistent answer to citizenship status, they never would have been detected.

The sorry tale of the government abetting and covering up follows. Read the whole thing.

More Thursday Tanlines

Wombat-socho has "Rule 5 Sunday: Bomber Girl" up on time and within budget.

It's the Little Things

We had a chore to do in PF today, so we packed Skye up in the Lead Sled and took her to the dog park to get some of her ya-ya's out. Unfortunately, no other dogs came to visit while we were there, so she had to be content with running around on her own, which doesn't work as well. But she had fun sniffing the weeds.

The weed du jour, Oxalis, which gave it's name to oxalic acid.

Oxalis /ˈɒksəlᵻs/ is a large genus of flowering plants in the wood-sorrel family Oxalidaceae comprising about 800 of the 900 known species in the family. The genus occurs throughout most of the world, except for the polar areas; species diversity is particularly rich in tropical Brazil, Mexico and South Africa.

Many of the species are known as wood sorrels (sometimes written "woodsorrels" or "wood-sorrels") as they have an acidic taste reminiscent of the unrelated sorrel proper (Rumex acetosa). Some species are called yellow sorrels or pink sorrels after the color of their flowers instead. Other species are colloquially known as false shamrocks, and some called sourgrasses. For the genus as a whole, the term oxalises is also used.

There were a few butterflies around, but none were cooperative except this Eastern-Tailed Blue, a male from the powder blue on the upper surface of the wings.

Then I saw a few feet away, four more of them "puddling" on an old dog poop. I was so impressed I didn't even clean it up.

I also found this orange skipper, which seems to be a run-of-the-mill Sachem.

Apparently, the dog park wasn't near enough exercise for Skye, as she started nagging for another walk shortly after lunch. So off we went. The beach was all but empty, the fossil hunting poor (4 teeth), but the weather was nice, mid 70s and breezy from the south.

Most of the interest was on the walk home. A dash of color in the wetland?

A Blue Flag Iris, the native swamp iris. I took the starts for the blue flags in my pond from this very spot about 20 years ago.

A brush bunny on the side of the road got Skye excited. It let us get within 2 leash lengths before it got sufficiently concerned to hop off into the bushes.

A Yellow Flag Iris, a non-native swamp iris, slightly larger and more robust than the Blue Flags, in the ditch/stream at the bottom of our back lots. Considered invasive, I don't see enough of them to be worried about them taking over.

Sufficient Obamacare Schadenfreude Having Arisen . . .

. . . since the last post, it's time to clean the decks again.

Obamacare continues its downward spiral, Western Missouri becomes a canary in Obamacare coal mine as Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas City drops Obamacare coverage, North Carolina's big Obamacare insurer wants steep rate hike for '18 (but would be happy with some more federal $), Insurers Request Double-Digit Premium Rate Increases for Obamacare Plans Next Year and HHS notes that Premiums for individual health plans doubled between 2013 and 2017. Affordable indeed.

Speaking of the illegal cost sharing that Blue Cross Blue Shield wants, will President Trump stop it or not? Signs are mixed, one day Trump is leaning towards ending ObamaCare’s cost-sharing subsidies, the next, the White House wants to continue Obamacare cost sharing payments for another 90 days.

Meanwhile, Republican attempts to repair or replace Obamacare are going nowhere fast, GOP leader tempers ObamaCare expectations and Senate Republicans consider pushing Obamacare repeal back to 2020. The New York Times agrees that McConnell May Have Been Right: It May Be Too Hard to Replace Obamacare. As long as McConnell won't nuke the legislative filibuster, that's probably true. However, on the bright side, the House leadership now open to changes to the AHCA after learning new info about EHBs/the reconciliation process. A HuffPo survey hints that Women Are More Worried About AHCA Than Men, but as Instapundit retorts  WELL, THAT’S BECAUSE THEY CONSUME WOMEN’S MEDIA, WHICH IS EVEN MORE ABOUT DEMOCRAT-SHILLING AND FEARMONGERING THAN REGULAR MEDIA and It’s also the case, of course, that men pay for most healthcare, while women consume most of it. So perhaps both are being rational.

The new CBO report is in on the new version of the Republican plan, and the good news is that it still reduces the deficit. The supposed bad news is that it forces about 20 million less people into buying health insurance they may not want, and might not benefit from.The truth about your health care, ObamaCare and the CBO numbers. CBO has never been very good at projecting how many people would sign up for Obamacare either, so there's that.

Brought to us by Wombat-socho's "In The Mailbox: 05.30.17" Megan McArdle thanks the Republicans: Guys. You Broke the Congressional Budget Office. Thank You!

the Republican bill has a completely different problem: It relies so heavily on state level waivers that the CBO simply has no way of predicting, even imperfectly, what’s going to happen.

Just to get this week's estimates, the CBO was were forced to guess which states might use waivers, and how they might choose to implement them. But the CBO doesn’t want to be in the business of making political calls, because that opens up vast room for the political leanings of the analysts to substitute for budget analysis. So instead they try to look at structural factors within the states themselves -- which states have problems in their markets, which states are relatively stable.

Democrats have their gaze fixed on the socialist solution:  Will CA Dems go full tilt on single payer — despite the costs? Probably. Since when have untenable costs been a hindrance to democrats. All you have to do is raise taxes on the rich. In "In The Mailbox: 05.31.17" Wombat-socho brings us Megan again with States Where Single-Payer Health Care Could Work (If It Could Work Anywhere)
But it probably can’t, at least in the U.S. Before you argue for universal health care in America, look at the disaster in England

Hope springs eternal, however, and so do single-player plans. Their last run at the federal government having failed (along with a referendum in Colorado that voters rejected four to one), advocates are back at work in state legislatures. California and New York are both considering plans at the moment, and not just in the “Hmm, interesting. What’s for lunch?” sense. Say what you want about single-payer advocates, but say this too: You can’t stop them with much less than a Howitzer.

Of their plans, there are a few things to say. The first, and most obvious, is that none of them have solved the main obstacle to enacting single payer in the U.S.: the price tag. . . Analyses by single-payer-friendly sources (such as Gerald Friedman of UMass Amherst, and the heavily Democratic California State Senate) tend to indicate that moving to single payer would involve roughly doubling the budgets of even high-tax, high-spending states like New York and California. Less friendly sources suggest that the cost might be substantially higher than that.

Reason #5553 That Trump Was Elected

Gaining, I'm sure, the gratitude of everyone, who's had to sit through a diversity seminar the Trump administration plans to minimize civil rights efforts in agencies

The Trump administration is planning to disband the Labor Department division that has policed discrimination among federal contractors for four decades, according to the White House’s newly proposed budget, part of wider efforts to rein in government programs that promote civil rights.

As outlined in Labor’s fiscal 2018 plan, the move would fold the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, now home to 600 employees, into another government agency in the name of cost-cutting.

Please move them to Fargo, ND in the process.

The proposal to dismantle the compliance office comes at a time when the Trump administration is reducing the role of the federal government in fighting discrimination and protecting minorities by cutting budgets, dissolving programs and appointing officials unsympathetic to previous practices.

The new leadership at the Environmental Protection Agency, for instance, has proposed eliminating its environmental justice program, which addresses pollution that poses health threats specifically concentrated in minority communities. The program, in part, offers money and technical help to residents who are confronted with local hazards such as leaking oil tanks or emissions from chemical plants.

Don't get me going on "environmental justice"

Under President Trump’s proposed budget, the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights — which has investigated thousands of complaints of discrimination in school districts across the country and set new standards for how colleges should respond to allegations of sexual assault and harassment — would also see significant staffing cuts. Administration officials acknowledge in budget documents that the civil rights office will have to scale back the number of investigations it conducts and limit travel to school districts to carry out its work.

Yes, the "civil rights" people in the Education Dept have been working hard to remove due process and the presumption of innocence for men in sexual harassment complaints.

Instapundit summed it up best: WELL, SINCE THEY’RE ACTUALLY JUST BULLPENS FOR LEFTY ACTIVISTS, THAT’S GOOD.

Blue Catfish Escape Blame in Shad and Herring Declines

Nonnative catfish not primary driver of American shad declines in James River

When concerns about the negative effects of nonnative catfish on native fish species in Virginia’s rivers began to arise, researchers from Virginia Tech’s College of Natural Resources and Environment and the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries decided to explore whether these catfish are really to blame for declining native fish populations.

Joseph Schmitt of Mechanicsville, Virginia, a doctoral student in fish and wildlife conservation in the College of Natural Resources and Environment, and other investigators recently published a study on predation of native fish species in the James River by nonnative catfish in the journal Marine and Coastal Fisheries: Dynamics, Management, and Ecosystem Science.

The study examines whether introduced catfish are preying heavily upon depleted native species including American shad, blueback herring, and alewife — species that once supported major fisheries along the Atlantic coast.

“There were several people claiming anecdotally that catfish were ‘decimating’ American shad, blueback herring, and alewife populations, yet no studies had been published in the scientific literature,” Schmitt said.

According to Schmitt, American shad has been called “America’s founding fish” owing to its importance as a colonial food source. Prior to the 1980s, American shad supported lucrative commercial fisheries in Virginia; however, factors including overfishing, bycatch from offshore fisheries, barriers to migration, and predation have all played a role in the dramatic decline of this and other similar species.

Nonnative blue catfish and flathead catfish are both large, long-lived species that thrive in murky, nutrient-rich rivers. Blue catfish were introduced into Virginia tributaries of the Chesapeake Bay during the 1970s and 1980s to create new fishing opportunities at a time when many fisheries had collapsed or were on the brink of collapse. While no one knows who was responsible for stocking flathead catfish in the James River, they are now established in the James, Potomac, Susquehanna, and York River drainages.

To determine whether predation by these two catfish species is a major cause in the decline of American shad, blueback herring, and alewife, researchers used a technique called low-frequency electrofishing, which uses electricity to stun fish. Schmitt explained that catfish are particularly susceptible to this method of fishing.

“The electricity stuns them, and they rise to the surface and begin swimming erratically for a minute or two,” Schmitt explained.

Once a fish was netted, a team member shot a stream of pressurized water into its stomach, making it regurgitate whatever it had eaten. The fish was then returned to the river, unharmed. Later, in the lab, DNA testing enabled the team to identify the digested fish remains and determine which species the catfish were preying on.

Mmm! That must be fun. I don't see the problem with keeping the fish, and slitting it's stomach to get the contents (which are still disgusting), expecially when the species involved are invasive species suspected of being harmful to the environment. And you can donate the fish to the poor!

“It’s actually fairly disgusting,” Schmitt admitted. “People in our department started calling us ‘team gag and bag.’”

He pointed out that the procedure, called gastric lavage, is commonly used and that the team’s protocol had been approved as safe.

In the spring of 2014 and 2015, Schmitt and his team spent three to four days each week working on the river and caught approximately 2,500 catfish. They found that, despite popular assumptions that blue catfish were doing the most damage to American shad, blueback herring, and alewife populations, these species were found in the stomachs of only 4.46 percent of blue catfish tested. The same three species were found in the stomachs of 17 percent of the flathead catfish tested.

While the researchers found that the catfish tested were indeed preying on American shad, blueback herring, and alewife, Schmitt explained that populations of the three species had begun to crash before the nonnative catfish were introduced into the ecosystem, so catfish predation can’t be considered the main cause of their decline.

So, they really didn't need the studies to prove their hypothesis?  Baby needs new shoes!

Wombat-socho has "Rule 5 Sunday: Bomber Girl" up on time and within budget.

I Can Hardly Wait for the Gender Theory of Gravity

Feminist researcher invents ‘intersectional quantum physics’ to fight ‘oppression’ of Newton

A feminist academic affiliated with the University of Arizona has invented a new theory of “intersectional quantum physics,” and told the world about it in a journal published by Duke University Press.

Whitney Stark argues in support of “combining intersectionality and quantum physics” to better understand “marginalized people” and to create “safer spaces” for them, in the latest issue of The Minnesota Review.

Because traditional quantum physics theory has influenced humanity’s understanding of the world, it has also helped lend credence to the ongoing regime of racism, sexism and classism that hurts minorities, Stark writes in “Assembled Bodies: Reconfiguring Quantum Identities.”

A researcher in culture and gender studies at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, Stark also holds an appointment in women’s and gender studies at the University of Arizona through its Institute for LGBT Studies.

She is a member of the Somatechnics Research Network, hosted by UA, whose scholars “reflect on the mutual inextricability of embodiment and technology.”

Stark identifies Newtonian physics as one of the main culprits behind oppression. “Newtonian physics,” she writes, has “separated beings” based on their “binary and absolute differences.”

“This structural thinking of individualized separatism with binary and absolute differences as the basis for how the universe works is embedded in many structures of classification,” according to Stark.

These structures of classification, such as male/female, or living/non-living, are “hierarchical and exploitative” and are thusly “part of the apparatus that enables oppression.”

But if I wanted to calculate a ballistic trajectory I'd use Newton's mechanics and not hers.

In a just world, she'd be laughed out of academia.

Reason #5552 That Trump Was Elected

How Trump Affected Political Correctness

A major theme—the major theme?—of Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign for the presidency was his relentless assault on socially-enforced standards of speech and opinion that those on the Right tend to refer to as political correctness and those on the Left tend to refer to as politeness or propriety. And a new paper from the National Bureau of Economics Research suggests that this assault was at least partly successful: By “updating” peoples’ preferences about the popularity of anti-immigration views, Trump’s unexpected victory made people more willing to express anti-immigration views publicly than they were before Election Day.

The authors (Leonardo Bursztyn of the University of Chicago, Georgy Egorov of Northwestern, and Stefano Fiorin of UCLA) summarize their methodology like this: In the run-up to the 2016 election, they offered subjects a dollar “if they authorized the researchers to make a donation to a strongly anti-immigration organization on their behalf.” Some of the participants were told that their donation would be anonymous. Others were told that they researchers might ask them about their decision later. Those who thought their donation would be anonymous were significantly more likely to authorize it than those who thought they might need to discuss it in the future, “suggest(ing) the presence of social stigma associated with the action.” After the election, however, this social stigma disappeared; people were just as likely to authorize a donation to an anti-immigrant group even if they were not assured that the donation would be anonymous.

It’s not that Trump’s election increased anti-immigration sentiment, the authors say—it just made people already inclined toward restrictionism feel less of a need to conceal their preferences.

The signs of preference cascade.  Once people see that a substantial fraction of the public holds a view contrary to that preferred by the dominant media, they become more willing to show it in public, and convince even more people to follow suit:

An example of this is the British colonists before and after publication of Thomas Paine's Common Sense. A year before the Declaration of Independence, America was full of patriotic British convinced that things could be worked out with King George, but on July 4, 1776 the colonies were full of Americans determined that they needed independence. Another is the relatively recent "Arab Spring."

And the fall of communism.

I Don't Usually Do This, But . . .

Deal of the Day at Amazon Penn Battle II Spinning Reels.

This is a heck of a deal. If I just hadn't had my favorite Shimano Stradics cleaned and repaired, I might need a couple. These are the reels Pete uses for guiding, so I've used them a fair amount. They work right, feel good, and hold up to the abuse of many different people using them.

Note that clicking the links above will direct you to Amazon through my affiliate link, and I will receive a small reward if you order though them or if you use the search  widget in the right side bar.

Cuties Confront Lionfish Menace

Nikkie Cox (left), Meaghan Faletti and Rachel Bowman (right)

These women caught more than 900 lionfish in 24 hours off the Florida coast

Marathon lionfish hunter Rachel Bowman has bragging rights for being honored as one of the state’s top harvesters.

She earned more bragging rights over the weekend in Pensacola, taking first place on a team with two other women in the third annual Lionfish World Championship.

The tournament was part of Pensacola’s lionfish Removal and Awareness Day Festival. The invasive species has no natural predators, largely due to their array of venomous spines. Lionfish eat voraciously and breed constantly, threatening local fish species and the reef at large.

Team Hang On, composed of Bowman, St. Petersburg resident Meaghan Faletti and Nikkie Cox of Apalachicola caught 926 lionfish while diving 37 miles off Pensacola, led by Capt. Grayson Shepard, also of Apalachicola. Together, the team hauled in nearly a quarter of the total 3,868 lionfish caught from 5:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, said Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission spokeswoman Amanda Nalley. There were five other teams in the tournament and it was hosted by the Gulf Coast Lionfish Coalition with prizes for largest lionfish and most caught.

I've never caught a Lionfish, except as a teenager working in a tropical fish store. A friend of mine got stung, and claimed it hurt really bad.

Ultimately, derbies like this to try to eliminate invasive species are not particularly effective. Too few in too small an area are removed. If you need to eliminate a fish, find a market, and set ridiculous size, number limits on them, and let the commercial fishermen do it for you.

Lionfish are reportedly delicious. Here Meghan shows how to safely filet one:



Basically, avoid the spines (I could have told you that). She shows entirely too much motion near the dorsal spines for my taste.

Wombat-socho has "Rule 5 Sunday: Bomber Girl" up on time and within budget.

Even a Broken Watch . . .

Swiped from Theo's

. . . is right occasionally: ‘Liberals think they are tolerant but often they aren’t’ says…Fareed Zakaria?

Fareed Zakaria devoted a segment of his show today to the issue of conservative speakers on college campuses. After reviewing protests against Vice President Pence, Education Secretary DeVos and others, Zakaria said it was “strange” to see this happening on colleges that should be the bastions of openness to all idea.

“Freedom of speech and thought is not just for warm fuzzy ideas that we find comfortable, it’s for ideas that we find offensive,” Zakaria said. He added that while there was a strain of anti-intellectualism on the right, “there is also an anti-intellectualism on the left. An attitude of self-righteousness that says we are so pure, we are so morally superior; we cannot bear to hear an idea with which we disagree.”

“Liberals think they are tolerant but often they aren’t,” Zakaria said. He then cited a 2016 PEW survey which found 70% of Democrats said Republicans were close-minded as compared to 52% of Republicans who said the same of Democrats. “But each side scores about the same in terms of close-mindedness and hostility to hearing contrarian views,” Zakaria said. Here’s the segment from his show: