Rescued

… and, winter is coming. For those just scrolling by while whistling past the graveyard, you might want to read this story and prepare yourself while you watch your wallet because the shit just might hit the fan and soon. Economic Impacts from climate change are here and only getting worse. There...

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  • October 11, 2021

… and, winter is coming. China, already in a significant energy crunch, has been experiencing energy shortages due to extreme weather, a surge in demand, and a fledgling effort to reduce CO2 emissions. It is a triple whammy for the country that produces the second-highest global greenhouse emissions in the...

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  • October 11, 2021

A glacial landslide scar, all that remained of a previous piece of ice that had collpased, is believed to have triggered a new landslide that slammed into and triggered part of Nanda Devi glacier to collapse. When the rocky debris slammed into the Himalayan glacier’s much larger remnant, it sent rock and ice down a valley...

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  • February 8, 2021

​ Kitchen Table Kibitzing is a community series for those who wish to share a virtual kitchen table with other readers of Daily Kos who aren’t throwing pies at one another. Drop by to talk about music, your weather, your garden, or what you cooked for supper…. Newcomers may notice...

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  • January 30, 2021

Liz Cheney: “We just had a violent mob assault the US capitol … No question the President formed the mob, the President incited the mob, the President addressed the mob. He lit the flame.” x These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is...

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  • January 6, 2021

A day of both quiet gratitude but combined with sadness. Today is our 35th  wedding anniversary, which sadly because of the pandemic we will not celebrate with a dinner out. Still we are grateful for one another. The sadness is because yesterday we had to say goodbye to Elsa, our...

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  • December 29, 2020

But there are 40-odd cinder cones of once-active volcanos clustered near the bucolic town of Boring, just east of Portland Oregon.  These, and the related lava flows, are part of the Boring formation. I live off this map to the left (west of Beaverton).  I am intensely interested in this Boring...

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  • December 12, 2020

I have the utmost respect for Ruth Bader Ginsburg and was beyond distraught at the news of her death yesterday. Nonetheless, the election is 44 days away and is the most consequential one ever for the soul of America. RBG would not want us to avoid thinking about how to...

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  • September 20, 2020

More Trump lies as he puts two days into Nevada. Trump claims there were "tens of thousands of people on the streets" lining his motorcade route to the rally tonight. That's a lie. I was in the motorcade. There were onlookers at different points on the 45-minute drive. But not...

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  • September 13, 2020

An Oregon developer of a proposed gas station next to a creek and wetlands has withdrawn his application. In short:  Victory! Withdrawn App, how sweet the sound, Saving trees … thirty feet around. They were doomed on this place, but now are saved, thanks to Grace. The nearby neighborhoods’ coveys...

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  • September 4, 2020

I’m Red Woodman, Senior Investigator for what we call the “Frog Court.”  If I can just get through today, I can retire with a pension.  But a whole bunch of new cases just hit my in-basket and I came to work to find a guy sobbing over a couple of baby...

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  • August 14, 2020

But of course the damsel flies are not really drinking; they are laying eggs. They contort on the edge of a lily pad with their abdomen curved into the water seemingly under the lip of the pad. It’s called ovipositing. I’d seen lots of damselflies joining at the end of their...

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  • July 20, 2020

I’m just an old race horse out to pasture, pawing the ground when the race track bugle sounds.  I still read the local public notices about developments, reflecting back on 40 years of environmental challenges, wishing someone was doing some more challenging. And then something happened.  I am terrible at this...

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  • July 9, 2020

Received this e-mail today from former presidential candidate, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D, MA): Texas has a special place in my heart. It's where I got my second chance at college, for $50 a semester at the University of Houston (go Cougars!). It's where my Aunt Bee rescued me by...

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  • July 9, 2020

But just a day or two after Billy Heron, the patriarch of my back yard gardens and ponds left, Cocky Robin brushed aside the murmured objections from the littler birds, and mounted the Sacred Roof Arch for his own announcement. “Listen up!  When Billy Heron’s gone, Cocky Robin is the...

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  • May 21, 2020

“Oyez,  I call  Frog Court into session,”  rumbled Chief Justice Jeremiah, himself a very large bullfrog. “Bailiff, read the opening Declaration.” The impossibly tall Bailiff stood and began reading:  “In accordance with resolution of a civil suit involving a Reagan cabinet member and prescription drugs,  The Department of Fish and Wildlife...

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  • March 27, 2020

Even during the struggle with having Dixiecrats in its midst, the modern Democratic party has stood for social justice, however compromised because of the nation’s conflicted constitutional history. The “social democrat” media frame must offset name-calling of “socialist/communist”, since America’s mixed regulatory economy does resemble economies which the US falls behind...

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  • February 25, 2020

The Atlantic article by Sarada Peri assumes an event will occur that is endemic. Trump has destabilized facts and their media frames. If he’s going to cheat what was he doing before this moment, starting with when he lied about the wealth inherited from his father. Democratic primary voters care deeply...

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  • February 23, 2020

First an apology. My post yesterday on my decision to vote for Warren (which I did at about 9:45 AM) and to contribute to her campaign ($100 online) was my first posting here in more than a month. Some may remember that in mid-November I suffered a stroke, later had...

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  • February 23, 2020

Kitchen Table Kibitzing is a community series for those who wish to share a virtual kitchen table with other readers of Daily Kos who aren’t throwing pies at one another. Drop by to talk about music, your weather, your garden, or what you cooked for supper…. Newcomers may notice that...

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  • February 15, 2020

en.wikipedia.org/… California has about 40 million people and Wyoming has 577,000. It takes nearly 70 Wyomings to equal one California, though both are represented by two Senators as the constitution requires. Add one congressperson to the Senators and Wyoming has three electoral votes. California gets 55 electoral votes which is...

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  • February 2, 2020

Of course, Donald Trump famously said he’d get 95 percent of the black vote in 2020. Then again, Donald Trump says a lot of things. Almost none of them are true. A new survey from Third Way and the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies reveals that 57 percent...

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  • December 30, 2019

This to me may be the second most important diary I have written.  The first one was back in 2012 when my Vet had a PTSD break and was stranded in South Carolina.  Remember?    This is an emergency fundraising Diary ! The vet from Daily Kos dropped what he...

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  • September 23, 2019

Cross-posted from Eclectablog.com During the time when the Flint water crisis was unfolding, right wing conservatives spent a lot of time trying to convince the country and the world that it was all the fault of the local government. They portrayed these local leaders as incompetent buffoons who poisoned themselves,...

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  • August 16, 2019

Right now we’re facing one existential crisis: Trump, the Republicans, and the White Supremacists along with the oligarchs, are trying to turn this country into South Africa during apartheid. (Yes, Godwin’s Law has been suspended, and Trump thinks Mein Kampf is an instruction manual, but for the time being I...

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  • July 17, 2019

Every so often one encounters a myth about electric vehicles that's so odd it makes you scratch your head. When it happens just once, it's easy to dismiss, but when it keeps popping up, it becomes time to address it. In recent weeks, I've seen multiple people assert that, “Sure,...

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  • July 13, 2019

For the fifth year in a row, the tiny native Chorus Frogs have returned with the Winter Solstice moon, to breed in my back yard ponds.  The new generation of frogs were born as egg sacs on the Equinox moon. And now, they are morphing from tadpoles into full-pledged, if tiny,...

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  • June 21, 2019

In a very few years, our country is going to adopt a “Green New Deal,”  and hopefully the rest of the world will follow our example. The Green New Deal will turn our existing economy upside down.  Trillions of dollars of existing power plants, and the gas and oil industries...

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  • June 13, 2019

I have been reluctant to push for impeachment up til now, on the grounds that, since the Senate would never convict, it’s a fruitless exercise which might well help Trump and the GOP. I’ve changed my mind, for a number of reasons: 1. I haven’t read the full Mueller report,...

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  • April 24, 2019

For many of us, the loud rapid croaking of peeper frogs fills the Spring air.  Varieties of the thumb-sizer peeper, or chorus, or tree frogs  occupy a North American range almost from the Arctic circle to the Equator. However often you’ve heard the peeper frogs, it’s unlikely that you’ve seen...

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  • April 14, 2019

Joe Biden has not done himself any favors in the last day.  First up, he has demonstrated again that he has bad political judgement, arrogance, and won’t acknowledge, “I fucked up.” Former Vice President Joe Biden said Tuesday that he wished he “could have done something” to prevent the attacks...

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  • March 27, 2019

Joe Biden has not done himself any favors in the last day.  First up, he has demonstrated again that he has bad political judgement, arrogance, and won’t acknowledge, “I fucked up.” Former Vice President Joe Biden said Tuesday that he wished he “could have done something” to prevent the attacks...

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  • March 27, 2019

The chorus frogs have returned to the Frog Mitigation Area again this Spring. These tiny native frogs first occupied two small ponds in my backyard five years ago. The males usually arrive by ones and twos in late February. but they didn’t show until early March this year.  They set up...

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  • March 24, 2019

I recently set up a 5 gallon aquarium and germinated lotuses in it from storied seeds.  I purchased two Japanese “trapdoor” snails to eat the aquarium’s algae.  They just had a half-dozen live young, so I am sort of a grandfather of snails. This covey of snails swiftly ate all of...

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  • March 6, 2019

The ”Frog Court” originated as result of a sealed court settlement over an unfortunate incident regarding Nixon EPA Administrator Anne Gorsche, prescription drugs, a government limo, and a lost weekend in the early 1970s. The quiet settlement established the Frog Environmental Regulatory Commission, or FERC.  FERC’s mandate is the protection...

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  • February 2, 2019

This article was first published on Up North Progressive on December 29, 2018 On Christmas Eve Rick Snyder closed the citizen’s input hotline early to ensure Michigan taxpayers could no longer object to the shame duck bills he signed just in time for Gretchen Whitmer to take over on January...

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  • December 30, 2018

Ursulafaw requested a repost of this Christmas classic from 2016.  Hope you enjoy! 'Twas the Right before Christmas   Twas the right before Christmas, when all through the states, – 'Thug legislatures were ginning up hate. – In Charlotte they dimmed the new Democrat's lights, – And Columbus nixed women's...

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  • December 24, 2018

I’ve worked for labor unions for 40 years and I’m proud of it.  But I’ve also witnessed, and suffered, from the employers’ and their conservative political allies’ relentless and successful attacks on workers. Unions have lost ground over the last 40 years. Weaker unions meant we had to bargain contracts...

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  • December 22, 2018

Trump promised a red wave this year, and it looks like he got it. Rivers of red ink are flooding Wall Street. The Dow closed at 22,445.37 today, ending a terrible week, month, and year for stocks — and, frankly, it’s hard to see a bottom. Unless you’re talking about...

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  • December 21, 2018

This is a quick hopefully audience-friendly guide to the main charges that will (and won’t!) play a part in prosecuting collusion with Russia. In particular, I want to highlight the requirements for proving each of these offenses, because that’s valuable for understanding Mueller’s strategy as the various parts of this saga start to...

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  • December 14, 2018

Late last winter I came down with a pretty bad case of diverticulitis that landed me in the hospital for a few days with some of the worse pain I’ve ever experienced. I got out and made it back to work for all of two days before I was back...

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  • November 25, 2018

Many people are rightly worried that the appointment of “Conservative” Brett M. Kavanaugh will lead to the reversal of Roe v. Wade and other constitutional protections.  With that in mind, I think that the Democratic Senators have to do a better job of framing this debate in the nomination hearings.  And...

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  • July 11, 2018

President Trump and the U.S. Constitution (and established norms of governing) have been on a collision course since day one of the Trump presidency, but there is one looming, and overdue, Constitutional conflict that has not been discussed generally and which could serve, surprisingly, as a corrective outcome of the Trump presidency:...

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  • March 25, 2018

Things are… not going well in Spain right now. How to breed an infertile, mentally disabled king, who soils himself regularly, and sparks a regional war with his death. First, a little history. Some three hundred years ago, what is now that little pointy bit that constitutes the northeast corner of...

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  • September 29, 2017

This blog originally appeared on Up North Progressive Can we revoke Directive 4 on The Nerd yet? Back in 2011, when an unknown, nerdy former chairman of the board of a former computer giant called Gateway was sworn in as governor of the state of Michigan, his plans for the...

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  • January 15, 2016

Grand Traverse Academy made many changes over the summer to make it appear like they have distanced themselves from Dr. Steve Ingersoll. His business partner, Dr. Mark Noss, formed a new LLC to act as management company for GTA. The school has a new superintendent and the person doing the...

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  • September 15, 2014

Charter Schools are a scourge on this country, and no state suffers from this pestilence more than Michigan. Chris Savage of Eclectablog has done an excellent job exposing the horror known as the Education Achievement Authority, but they're not the only ones ripping off taxpayers to make themselves rich. Steve...

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  • June 8, 2014

Especially when they know they're being used as a guinea pig against their own best interests. Guinea Pigs used in research never end up living happier, healthier lives either. The scientists and financial backers slap each other on the back and tell each other, “Oh well, better luck next time,”...

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  • July 21, 2013

We've all heard the complaints about teachers: They're lazy, they get the whole summer off. What do they even do all day with those kids? It's not like they actually produce anything. Once they get tenure it's impossible to get rid of them no matter how terrible they are and...

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  • July 13, 2013

I read a very interesting piece about the protests which have been sweeping across the major cities of Turkey.  It seems that if you hold a people down with a heavy authoritative fist, they will eventually rise up and strike back.  In this case, the Turks are doing so peacefully...

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  • June 6, 2013